RICCARDO SCARMARCIO AND CLARA PONSOT IN COSIMO AND NICOLE (2013)Interrupted passion recalled Blue-eyed Italian heartthrob Riccardo Scamarcio (
My Brother Is an Only Child,
Loose Canons,
Eden Is West ) and young French firebrand Clara Ponsot (who's had many TV series and TV movie roles) give their all as the volatile young lovers in this film told as flashbacks framed by "interviews" and ending with a celebration of African political exile they've "helped." But these actors, for all their enthusiasm, are the victims of a screenplay that tries to say too much, and may be blind to its political insensitivity.
Cosimo (Scarmarcio) and Nicole (Ponsot) meet as young activists at the famous 2001 Genoa G8 riots and immediately fall in love, or in lust. She is only 17; many commentators fail to note that he's shown to be more in love than she, and that despite talk of obsessive passion, Amato never conveys the mad hot attraction Katell Quillévéré memorably shows in her criminal couple in
Suzanne (FCN 2013). Talking to the framing "interview" camera Cosimo says Genoa was the only place where this French girl and Italian boy didn't feel "like strangers." So, taking up residence in a romantic rustic shack, the couple finds work for big local music impresario Paolo (Paolo Sassanelli, who was in Amato's debut feature
What the Hell Am I Doing Here?) , who trains Cosimo up to be his sound man (Nicole never goes beyond selling drinks). Then Alioune (Souleymane Sow), an illegal African fleeing war in Guinea in Southern Senegal, who worms his way into the crew against Paolo's will, has a serious accident and appears dead. Cosimo, who was standing by when the man fell off the scaffolding, helps Paolo cover it up, just dumping the body off somewhere. The repercussions from this action take up the rest of the film, arousing so much guilt and concern in Cosimo and Nicole that their sex life suffers markedly.
The situation seems like a sort of weird version of what happens in the Dardennes'
La Promesse, with Paolo unwillingly thrust into the position of Olivier Gourmet's immigrant-exploiting father. Paolo is doubtless already guilty of various infractions of the law in his rough and wild concert business. But needless to say, Riccardo Scarmarcio is no Jérémie Renier, and Cosimo is slow to develop a conscience. It's Nicole who takes action first.
Unlike
La Promesse's dishonest, mean dad, Paolo, the rock concert impresario, is the kind of rough engaging type whose misbehavior you want to forgive, and the movie seems to let him off easy -- a little too easy. He may be glamorous with his frantic energy and his ponytail and glasses, but he still seems like the ultimate bad buy in this. Yet when Cosimo and Nicole go on the run, he simply disappears from the story. The movie never clearly defines its moral issues or comes to terms with them. It's not even clear why the lovers have to go on the run except that it fulfills the movie's agendas.
It was nonetheless a pleasure to watch this movie in the New Italian Cinema series right after Stefano Mordini's desultory and inexplicable
Steel, because Amtao's film, though its plot may be full of holes, still has strong focus and forward thrust -- and during the Paolo section, some entertaining and varied concert scenes with real live music. In its first half at least,
Cosimo and Nicole is alive and bursting with action.
But as written by Francesco Amato, Giuliano Miniati and Daniela Gambaro, the screenplay seems unaware of its racially blind exploitation of the African as a mere backdrop for the torrid love affair of the white middle class European couple. Besides this criticism, which he states particularly forcefully,
Variety reviewer Boyd van Hoeij
points out that the Genoa G8 riots, where the titular couple meet, have already been used once too often for local color in Italian pictures. Von Hoelj isn't impressed at all by the film. He thinks Ponsot "too good for this material," and calls Scarmarcio "brooding monotonously as usual" (a devastating remark that is all too true: that sad face and those pale blue eyes don't have many variatious from film to film). Von Hoeij is so harsh as to suggest that the "supersaturated look and shallow emotional depth" of Federico Annicchiarico's cinematography is most likely "inspired by Instagram."
But the camera often moves ably, garish look or not. Aside from the intensity of the two leads, a further strength is in the music, particularly when integrated as a [art pf concert scenes: Marlene Kuntz, Afterhours and Verdena in the Paolo section are intermingled with original background music by Francesco Cerasi.
As Aurora Tamigio
says on the website
Silenzio in Sala, Amato seems to want to put everything he thinks about the world into this one film, as if nothing succeeds like excess -- and undermines his effort by using basically conventional materials: a by now cliché political event, rock music, an ordinary love story, a weighted, obvious reference to the immigrant problem. Alioune is pretty much a blank cliché, without anything fresh or individual about him, yet he's dragged out through the whole second half of the film, which feels much more dutiful and less organic than the first part. There's none of the Dardennes' ability to make us feel intensely about moral issues.
Besides, it's hard even to credit a lot of this. The accident seems a bit contrived. So is the way Nicole cuts her hand and has to go to the hospital so she and Cosimo can spot that Alioune, who seemed dead, has been found in a coma and is being brought in just as they leave. So is the way Nicole keeps going back to visit Alioune, burning his valise as instructed but saving an unsent love letter to his girlfriend. Is Nicole romantic because she's French and young or is she just more Italian than the Italians? Anyway Alioune reappears as if risen from the dead at the music stage, and when Paolo wants to kill him, to cover up his cover-up, Cosimo and Nicole run off with Alioune to Belgium, where he has family.
All this stops the romance, till the couple do time for illegally bringing an illegal into Belgium and are celebrated by Alioune's fellow countrymen in a new concert, this time a joyous African one, with dancing that Nicole ably joins along with. Then Cosimo dances close and it looks like she's not taking that train tonight.
Cosimo e Nicole, 100 mins., debuted at Rome 16 Nov. 2012, and won several awards in Italy. It opened theatrically in Italy 29 Nov., RAI Trade is the distributor. Screened for this review as part of the San Francisco Film Society's New Italian Cinema series, showing Friday, November 15, 9:00 pm at Landmark's Clay Theatre.
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