Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


Forum locked This topic is locked, you cannot edit posts or make further replies.  [ 1 post ] 
Author Message
PostPosted: Sun Nov 17, 2013 10:57 pm 
Offline
Site Admin

Joined: Sat Mar 08, 2003 1:50 pm
Posts: 4859
Location: California/NYC
Image
LUIGI LO CASCIO AND LUIGI MARIA BURRUANO IN THE IDEAL CITY

Kafkaesque Italian film noir with a Hitchckian hero

Luigi Lo Cascio, an actor known as one of the dual protagonists of the highly successful Italian historical mini-series The Best of Youth, and who also had a key role in Bellocchio's excellent Aldo Moro kidnapping film Good Morning, Night, has made his debut as a director. It's a quirky, conceptual Hitchcockisn film noir of an innocent man trapped in Kafkaesque legal proceedings, Kafka with an Italian accent. Playing his own protagonist, Lo Cascio who is small and ferret-like, has a furtive manner that contributes at once to the film's air of oddity and noirish unexpectedness. It's an interesting and worthy film. But unfortunately it fades toward the end into the puzzlement of its wry, dark ironies. High concept trumps pleasing suspense.

Michele Grassadonia (Lo Cascio) is a talented architect who's a fervent environmentalist. He's also a semi-comical oddball, race-walking around Siena snapping photos of employees he spies smoking, abruptly gathering up cigarette buts from the street in paper hankies. Using his clout as a star at the firm, he keeps coworkers from using the heat or putting on the office lights till it gets dark. All this prissy obsessiveness about his no-smoking, zero carbon footprint rules of conduct alienates people. But he's a leading figure at the firm -- till his trouble comes.

He transplanted from Palermo to Siena 18 years ago because he considers it the ideal city "for everything." In his bachelor apartment he's been carrying on an environmental experiment in his flat for over a year using various gadgets he's devised to use only rainwater. He generates electricity using a stationary bike. We see him shaving with an electric razor while peddling. He showers uncomfortably using a rigged bucket, and goes through other contortions. Environmentalism's lunatic fringes are clearly being satirized.

With this well-meaning oddball well established as a character, the film plunges into Michele's ill-starred evening. His mentor and the firm's director has asked a favor of him, to take the latter's wife on a long drive to keep her from attending one of his raucous club meetings. To do this he must borrow a new electric car from a friend and fellow environmental activist -- they have a city program afoot. But he hasn't driven a car in eight years, it's a terribly rainy night, and things go awry. First Michele hits something -- he can't see a thing in the torrential rain -- and then, swerving to one side, he grazes a parked car. He leaves a note on the car's windshield -- whose writing immediately washes away, neglecting to note down the car's license number Then he passes a big bundle of something and, thinking it's abandoned garbage of some kind, one of his pet peeves, he stops and goes back to remove it. It turns out to be the body of a man, unconscious but breathing. He calls for help. When the police come and question him, he becomes a suspect.

Little by little Michele becomes embroiled in an Italian style Kafkaesque legal and bureaucratic nightmare in which he is investigated under suspicion of of murder or manslaughter. A woman bailiff who comes for him in particular could come right out of Kafka's The Trial, and events have the same edge between comical , surreal, and menacing. Michele deals with three lawyers, a court-appointed one, the best one in town, and finally one from Palermo, the cynical Avvocato Scalici (Luigi Maria Burruano) who had something to do with his father when the latter was in serous trouble he only escaped from by dying. Michele's insistence of being honest gets him in deeper and deeper trouble.

The man Michele has "saved," Sansoni, is an important (but perhaps not liked) city figure. There may have been those who wanted him left by the side of the road; who may have put him there (he remains in a coma). They therefore ma want to get Michele. Anyway, everyone seems angry at him. The most Italian parts of Michele's nightmare may be the undertone of political maneuvering, the quoting of Latin, the directions to stay silent and recognize that in court cases, the truth is immaterial. Events are a study in the vagaries and twists of the Italian legal system. Meanwhile his life crumbles when his boss removes his ability to carry out projects and he must give up his apartment. He rents it to the beautiful, artistic daughter of a former client, an ambassador's wife and they have an odd, twilight relationship. (Seeming to follow Michele's zero-electricity rules, the film is shot with natural light and scenes are often in deep shadow.) Nightmares quietly intermingle with nightmarish events. Michale's mother comes back and forth from Palermo. She is played by Lo Cascio's own mother, Aida Burruano; and Avvocato Scalici is played by her brother.

The Ideal City is an original film with its own dark ironic tone. Boyd van Hoeij of Variety has a point, though, when he says, in his review that the fledgling director doesn't have a full control of tonal variations, and the comic and romantic bits don't quite fit with the rest. I also felt that the futility should lead to some kind of climax, which it doesn't. The music by Andrea Rocca, however, does a lot to pull things together.

La citta ideale, 105 mins, debuted at Venice in August 2012 and opened in Italian cinemas in April 2013. It was written by Luigi Lo Cascio, Massimo Gaudioso, Desideria Rayner and Virginia Borgi. The cast in order of presentation is: Luigi Lo Cascio, Alfonso Santagata, Catrinel Marlon, Aida Burruano, Franco Ravera, Amerigo Fontani, Angela Antonini, Michele Andrei, Giovanni Calcagno, Lorenzo Degli Innocenti, Valentina Sperli', Franco Massimo Gaudioso, Desideria Rayner, Virginia Borgi, Silvia Luzzi, Bettina Giovannini, Marcello Prayer, with Barbera Enrichi, with the participation of Vincenzo Pirrotta. Also: Luigi Maria Burruano, Massimo Foschi. Featuring Roberto Herlitzka. Edited by Desideria Rayner. Cinematography by Pasquale Mari. Sound recording by Fulgenzio Ceccon. Produced by Angelo Barbagallo. Rai Trade.

Screened for this review as part of the San Francisco Film Society's New Italian Cinema series, November 2013.

Image

_________________
©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Forum locked This topic is locked, you cannot edit posts or make further replies.  [ 1 post ] 

All times are UTC - 8 hours


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 131 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group