LOUIS GARREL AND VALERIA BRUNI TEDESCHI IN A CASTLE IN ITALY

The tumultuous frivolity of Valeria Bruni Tedeschi

The titular castle in Italy, an interrupted auction of a Bruegel, an in vitro fertilization, a breakup, a reunion, much drama, much improvisation combine to make this a very scattershot effort by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi - but arguably something a bit more involving than its predecessor, Actresses (NYFF 2007), which also featured her then main squeeze, Louis Garrel, playing an actor, this time called Nathan. The material is again frankly drawn from Bruni Tedeschi's own background as a member of a wealthy Italian Jewish industrial family (here called Rossi Levi), whose properties may have become too expensive to maintain and whose lives have become too complicated. This is serious stuff, but VBT's effort to toss it off in a manner that is both operatic and frivolous -- to make us weep for her and laugh with her both -- leads to freequent tonal slips and longeurs that can make the 104 minutes seem at times interminable and incomprehensible. There are many -- too many -- grand scenes; and there is an interesting cast. I called Actresses "at the same time both heavy handed and vague." This film is both heavy handed and frivolous. It does, however, have a certain drive and coherence this time, as the French critics have noted.

The protagonist's mother, played again as in Actresses by Valeria's actual mother, Marisa Bruni Tedeschi, tells Louise (VBT), an actress who's given up acting as her on-off boyfriend Nathan (Garrel) wants to, "you weren't Anna Magnani, but you had something." Well, if only she were Anna Magnani, maybe this film would have something, but she's not and it hasn't. She's a spoiled unattached lady from a place of privilege; there is no place for a grand passion in her life, except her single woman's midlife crisis: the desire to have a child before it's too late. When Nathan comes upon Louise, it seems they met as fellow actors some years earlier and he now conceives an instant mad desire to be her boyfriend. She isn't at first very interested; but then she is, if he can give her a child. Only he doesn't want a child. It's the clash of the narcissistic with the self-centered.

The castle in Italy costs ten thousand euros a month to maintain, and the family hasn't got that kind of ready cash. But when they meet with the lawyer (Philippe Pescayre) to discuss solutions, no one can be practical, except the somewhat arbitrary mother. Louise's saternine, slightly sadistic brother Ludovico (a scarily intense Filippo Timi, Mussolini in Marco Bellocchio's 2009 Vincere), who's dying of AIDS, insists the castle represents the memory of their late father, and cannot be touched. (The film is dedicated to Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's brother, Virginio, who died of AIDS at 47.) Also good as a bibulous, whiny family hanger-on called Serge is the great actor-director Xavier Beauvois. And we even get a distinguished glimpse of Omar Sharif as himself at the interrupted Bruegel the Younger auction, which Louise, in a typical VBT grandstanding move, stops just after a top bid has been accepted.

A lot of the material here has class -- a lovely French a cappella choir singing in a monastery alcove at the outset, for intance; interiors and views of the lawn of the castle -- but it feels thrown together, screaming too much for our attention. I must side with Mike D'Angelo in his AV Club report, who saw this film when it was the sole female-directed Competition entry at Cannes and concluded that though VBT's family has influence, her sister Carla Bruni being Sarkozy's wife, for instance, "apparently some people genuinely enjoy her shrill, self-absorbed, vacuous meditations on the difficulties faced by a middle-aged actress." But include us out. Yes, the rich have problems too. But it takes a greater director than this to make us care. I do not dislike Louis Garrel as D'Angelo does -- quite the contrary -- but he does indeed seem "callow" here, and describing this film as Assayas' Summer Hours "stripped of beauty, tenderness, grace, intelligence, and coherence" cruel thought it may sound, is not far off the mark.

Un chateau en Italie, 104 mins., debuted at Cannes. Opened in French cinemas 30 October 2013 to a mix of reviews, some quite good (Allociné press rating: 3.3). Screened for this review as part of the French Cinema Now series of the San Francisco Film Society, Nov. 2013. Also included here as part of the Unifrance--Film Society of Lincoln Center 6-16 March 2014 series, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Marisa Borini is nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the 2014 César Awards.
Monday, March 10, 6:00pm – IFC; Thursday, March 13, 9:00pm – WRT; Sunday, March 16, 6:30pm - WRT

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