Stefano Rabatti and Nader Sarhan in Ali Blue Eyes © Bellissima FilmsIntimate film about working class teenagers has the spirit of Italian neorealismWho the heck is Ali, who "has blue eyes" in the Italian title? This is about Nader, a boy of Arab descent who wears blue contacts in his eyes. The title comes from Pasolini’s poem “Prophesy,” and the protagonists of the film could be "Ragazzi di Vita." The neorealist tradition finally seems honestly and proficiently reflected in this film by Claudio Giovannesi about teenagers using non-actors who live and go to school in Rome's working-class suburb of Ostia. Sixteen-year-old Nader (Nader Sarhan) attaches himself to his friend Stefano (Stefano Rabatti) and at the outset Stefano steals a motorbike and robs a convenience store using a gun loaded with blanks. Nader was supposed to do it but chickens out. When they're done they go to their high school. At home, Nader and his family speak a mixture of Egyptian Arabic and Italian. The film has intertitles of the succession of days in Italian and Arabic -- marking time in a week that for the young Nader is very eventful. Nader's family is Egyptian and imposes Egyptian rules, but he considers himself Italian and stays out late with his Italian girlfriend Brigitte (Brigitte Apruzzesi). When he comes back home at two a.m. his mom won't let him in. They're Muslim and she can't stand his even being with a Christian girl.
Nader wants assert his independence so he sleeps with a family friend, Mahmoud (Salah Ramadan) in a communal apartment where a bunch of immigrants sack out. His parents become terribly worried. Meanwhile another event heightens the excitement of the week. When the two pals are at a disco Stefano gets into a fight over his ex-girlfriend Eleonora (Elisa Geroni) and knifes a Romanian guy. Later he learns the guy's big brother is out to get revenge, and they know he has an Arab cohort. So Nader and Stefano have to move around carefully.
The confusion of being an Italianized Muslim-Arab show in the contrast between Nader's insistence on free association and more with his Italian girlfriend, and the protective wall he maintains around his younger sister Laura (Yamina Kacemi) just as a conservative Egyptian would do back home.
Giovannesi built this film out of a documentary featuring Nader Sarhan and the same people, called Brothers of Italy. He gambled on making a fiction, based on incidents from Nader's and Stefano's own lives, and using their own family members in the cast, and it has paid off brilliantly. It's not easy to play yourself but the director, with great assistance from the skillful, intimate handheld work of dp Daniele Ciprí (who shot Bellocchio's
Vincere and
Dormant Beauty), has woven an exciting and seamless film out of real materials, and skillfully avoided obvious plot devices or easy climaxes and resolutions, focusing mainly on situations and relationships. This is a good one, and profo that some Italian filmmakers can still reconnect with their powerful cinematic roots. Unfortunately, the local public isn't much interested in this kind of film. But the industry and European audience are. Hence the film won the handsome, tough yet tender Nader Sarhan the Jean Carment Award at the Angers First film Festival (heralding a possible pro career to come). Giovannesi and his editor Giuseppe Trepiccione and producer Fabrizio Mosca received a number of Italian nominations. Admiration came also from veteran
Variety critic Jay Weissberg
writes, who wrote that in this second feature Giovannesi "reinvigorates the [Italian neorealist] form with exacting honesty." This is a good one.
Alì ha gli occhi azzurri, 94 mins., debuted at Rome 10 Nov. 2012 and opened there theatrically five days later; various festivals, including Tribeca 2013. Scheduled for release in France Feb. 2014. Screened for this review as part of the San Francisco Film Society New Italian Cinema series, showing Sat. 16 Nov. 2014 at Landmark's Clay Theater. See
the SFFS website for details.
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