NEW ITALIAN CINEMA -- SAN FRANCISCO FILM SOCIETY NOV. 19-23, 2014. I have seen and reviewed three already, and will review some more.

Links to reviews:

Controra: House of Shadows (Rossella De Venuto 2013)
Human Voice (Edoardo Ponti 2014)
I Can Quit Whenever I Want/Smetto quando voglio(Sydney Sibilia 2014)
In the Snow/Neve (Stefano Incerti 2013)
Long Live Freedom/Viva la Libertà (Roberto Andò 2014)
Medicine Seller, The/Il venditore di medicine (Antonio Morabito 2013)
Misunderstood/Incompresa (Asia Argento 2014)
Nightshift Belongs to the Stars, The/Il turno di notte lo fanno le stelle (Edoardo Ponti 2012)
Per Ulisse (Giovanni Cioni 2013

This year's New Italian Cinema offers several distinct elements in the competition section, including the first-ever animated feature, an Italian production entirely in Arabic and a suspense-oriented film in the giallo tradition, among other extremely impressive first or second features. Opening Night features a very special evening with Edoardo Ponti alongside Asia Argento's welcome return to the director's chair, and the festival closes with another of Paolo Virzì's expert delineations of class inequity.

The SFFS series blurbs are given in edited versions below. All films presented at the Vogue Theatre, San Francisco on the dates given. [/size]

FILMS

[b]An Evening with Edoardo Ponti. This special evening with Edoardo Ponti will feature two of his short films:

The Nightshift Belongs to the Stars/Il turno di notte lo fanno le stelle (Edoardo Ponti 2012) [REVIEWED]
The original screenplay by Erri De Luca tells the story of two people given a new lease on life who decide to scale a mountain in the dramatically picturesque Dolemites of northeastern Italy. With Natassja Kinski, Enrico Lo Verso, and Julian Sands.
November 19, 2014, 6:30 p.m.
Human Voice (Edoardo Ponti), with an iconic performance by Sofia Loren [REVIEWED]
In Erri De Luca's adaptation of the famous Jean Cocteau play. a scorned older woman (Loren) talks to her her unseen, unheard lover on the telephone in 1950s Naples. Cinetography by Rodrigo Prieto.
November 19, 2014, 6:30 p.m.

Misunderstood/Incompresa (Asia Argento 2014) [REVIEWED--NYFF]
The multi-talented Asia Argento returns to the director’s chair for this very personal look at a young girl who suffers at the hands of her self-centered and neglectful parents. Aria is a sensitive 9-year old, the daughter of an imperious pianist (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and an ambitious actor (Italian TV idol Gabriel Garko). When her constantly warring parents eventually separate, wide-eyed Aria must fend for herself with only her school friend Angelica and a neighborhood stray cat she names Dac to help assuage the deprivations of her home life. Argento is clearly working with autobiographical material here, but rather than wallowing in Aria’s sadness, she finds moments of humor and terror to leaven her protagonist’s story. Giulia Salerno is astounding in the lead role, showing Aria’s resourcefulness and resolution in the midst of chaos and mistreatment. With a style and sensibility all its own, Misunderstood is a compelling and richly imagined portrait of familial dysfunction.
November 19, 2014, 8:30 p.m.

Long Live Freedom/Viva la Libertà (Roberto Andò 2014) [REVIEWED-LINCOLN CENTER JUNE 2014]
Enrico Olivera (Toni Servillo) is a politician on the verge of a breakdown; heckled before a panel session, he disappears. His long-suffering assistant Andrea (Valerio Mastandrea) finds out from Enrico’s wife that there is a twin brother, Giovanni, whose existence has been kept secret as he’s been in an institution for some time. Andrea’s brainstorm to have Giovanni pose as Enrico takes a shocking turn when the “crazy” stand-in turns out to have some very sane ideas that are wildly embraced by the populace. Viva la Libertà offers a bold political satire in the vein of Being There spearheaded by the masterful Servillo, who creates two distinct characters with perfectly calibrated shadings of speech and appearance. Also features the wonderful Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (also in Human Capital) as a former flame of the twins.
November 20, 2014, 6:30 p.m.

Controra: House of Shadows (Rossella De Venuto 2013) [REVIEWED]
Besides neorealism and the spaghetti Western, Italy is also famous for the giallo, a genre of literature and film focusing on crime and mystery, and Controra fits firmly and memorably within its framework. Megan is a slightly uptight Irish painter who travels to Italy with her husband Leo to settle the will of his uncle Domenico, a priest who is being recommended for canonization. Settling in Domenico’s grand palazzo, Megan starts having frightening midday dreams and seeing mysterious apparitions. These experiences lead her to investigate the background of the family and the village, discovering some tragic history and arousing the anger of her husband and brother. Relying on more classical methods of instilling fear rather than gouts of gore, Rossella de Venuto has crafted a shadowy and startling supernatural thriller where the dead really do get a chance to have their say. (In English and Italian with subtitles)
November 20, 2014, 8:45 p.m.

Per Ulisse (Giovanni Cioni 2013 [REVIEWED]
In a working class suburb of Florence, several marginalized members of Italian society gather at a drop-in center called Project Ponterosso. Besides poverty, these struggling people have experienced addiction, prison and homelessness. With a moving frankness, they sing, play guitar, speak about their lives and troubles and, above all, evince a profound humanity. Director Giovanni Cioni has crafted a poetic and moving documentary in the neorealist tradition of his forbears.
November 21, 2014, 4:30 p.m.

Up to the World (Alessandro Lunardelli 2013)
This wide-ranging, ingratiating debut feature focuses on two brothers whose large age difference has kept them from knowing one another better. A road trip to Barcelona for a championship soccer match begins the bonding process, though a chance meeting in a bar sends 18-year-old Davide off to Chilean Patagonia with his more responsible older sibling Loris angrily chasing after him. Debuting director Alessandro Lunardelli tackles several interesting topics throughout the film—sexuality, the depredations of the Pinochet regime and the ways in which adult responsibility conflicts with self-discovery—within a constantly shifting and visually stunning international landscape. Filippo Scicchitano (who made his debut in Easy, NIC 2011) and Luca Marinelli (memorable as the mentally unstable young man in The Great Beauty, NIC 2013) have a wonderful charm and ease together and as their relationship deepens, the film’s more profound charms become apparent.
November 21, 2014, 6:30 p.m.

Blame Freud/Tutta colpa di Freud (Paolo Genovese 2014)
Bright and inviting, Paolo Genovese’s romantic comedy—a box-office smash in Italy—concerns a middle-aged therapist named Francesco who is concerned about the romantic welfare of his three adult daughters. Eldest Sara is considering heterosexuality after a bad break-up with her girlfriend, middle child Marta has fallen for a deaf mute, while his youngest Emma is seeing a much older man. The relationships between Francesco and his children are admiring and loving but, as a parent and especially as an analyst, he cannot resist advising and meddling in each of their affairs. When a potential love interest enters his life, however, he’s unable to take his own advice. With a passel of winning performances, Blame Freud offers a delightfully seriocomic examination of romantic foibles and the perils of parental counsel.
November 21, 2014, 9:00 p.m.

The Art of Happiness/L'arte della felicità (Alessandro Rak 2013)
A beautifully realized film focusing on the ruminations and personal history of a melancholic Naples cab driver, The Art of Happiness represents the first animated feature to be shown in NIC's history. The form is perfect for the story as 43-year-old Sergio drives through pounding rain and garbage-strewn streets while listening to a philosophical radio DJ whose thoughts prompt memories and reminiscences from Sergio’s own life. Formerly a talented pianist, the film interweaves Sergio’s history with that of his brother and former musical partner Alfredo and includes various conversations he has with his passengers over the course of an evening. Dark matters of grief and environmental degradation are contrasted with issues of creative renewal and romantic possibility with a rich and diverse visual palette to match the thematic scope. Through the murky scrim of constant rain and Sergio’s own discontent, the film endeavors to illuminate a way forward for its complex and conflicted hero.
Animated feature.
November 22, 2014, 1:30 p.m.

Remember Me/Ricorditi di me (Rolando Ravello 2014)
In this charming romantic comedy, Roberto is a kleptomaniac while Beatrice is narcoleptic and prone to amnesiac fugues—a match made in heaven. They meet outside the office of the therapist they both share, but Beatrice is initially unresponsive to Roberto’s advances. When he notices some of her OCD-type behavior and makes a chivalric leap to help her with it, she begins to warm to him. With its fable-like air, Remember Me has all of the elements that make for a good rom-com—chemistry between the lead actors, a smart assemblage of supporting characters and a script that finds a novel manner to tell the archetypal boy-meets-girl story. Like Beatrice’s fondness for lemon and coffee gelato, Rolando Ravello’s second feature offers an assemblage of different thematic flavors that has a surprising and rich appeal to the palate.
November 22, 2014, 4:00 p.m.

The Medicine Seller/Il venditore di medicine (Antonio Morabito 2013) [REVIEWED]
A scathing indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, Antonio Morabito’s powerful drama depicts a stressed-out salesman using increasingly scurrilous means to sell his company’s product. At the start, Bruno (Claudio Santamaria) is the Zafer corporation’s golden boy, wheedling doctors and administrators to select his firm’s treatments through various perks and his own charms. When he’s told to push a controversial new medicine, he meets with resistance and is given an ultimatum—get a notoriously difficult hospital administrator to prescribe the drug or lose his job. Compounding the problem is his girlfriend’s desire to have a child and his own increasing substance abuse. The Medicine Seller fearlessly indicts the whole pharmaceutical chain from the companies pushing the pills to the medical establishment’s capitulation toward an increasingly narcotized society to suffering consumers who are ill-informed and often ill-advised about the potentially harmful drugs they are being prescribed.
November 22, 2014, 6:30 p.m.

I Can Quit Whenever I Want/Smetto quando voglio(Sydney Sibilia 2014) [REVIEWED - LINCOLN CENER JUNE 2014]
Pietro (Edoardo Leo, also in Remember Me) is a brilliant chemistry professor hoping for a tenure contract. Pressured by his girlfriend who longs for greater financial stability, he lies and says he got the job. Increasingly desperate for money to back up his fib, he has a brilliant inspiration after a student he tutors takes him to a nightclub and buys him a drink laced with the latest smart drug. Rounding up several friends in similar circumstances, he concocts a plan to take advantage of legislative loopholes and manufacture a very special (and, for the moment, legal) product that will make them millions. Sydney Sibilia’s raucously entertaining film offers a comedic version of Breaking Bad with a hapless band of chemistry geeks discovering a great way to make money. Just like Walter White, however, they discover that their new endeavor leads to some unsavory business relationships and puts their own moral behavior into question.
November 22, 2014, 9:15 p.m.

In the Snow/Neve (Stefano Incerti 2013) [REVIEWED]
On a wintry road trip, two people with mysterious backgrounds join forces. Donato is a prison nurse on a driving holiday; stopping off for a roadside snooze, he gives a ride to a provocatively dressed woman named Norah. She’s on the run from a man sending threatening text messages while Donato has secrets of his own involving a decades-old robbery. Director Stefano Incerti (Gorbaciof, NIC 2013) keeps the audience guessing at to the motivations of each of the protagonists as the film progresses; are the characters falling for one another or are they seeking some kind of material gain out of the situation? Set within a wintry landscape that implies a quiet menace of its own, In the Snow offers a consistently intriguing study of lives at a crossroads.
November 23, 2014, 1:00 p.m.

Border (Alessio Cremonini 2013)
Topical and suspenseful, this debut feature details the plight of two sisters attempting to escape Syria by car. For Fatima and Aya, religious beliefs necessitate the wearing of a face-covering niqab which their driver insists will attract unwanted attention as they head for the Turkish border. Tensions are furthered when they pick up a mysterious male stranger headed in the same direction. When the car has to be abandoned in a wooded area populated by Syrian soldiers, rebel fighters and unaffiliated armed marauders, the siblings are forced into a fraught environment where they are under constant threat and no one can be trusted. Lifting the story from true events and working within a language and culture not his own, Alessio Cremonini has crafted a compelling story about lives utterly upended by civil war. “In a war, everyone kills everyone,” a rebel fighter tells one of the sisters, and Border, in its unflinching manner, demonstrates the tragic fact of his statement.
In Arabic with English subtitles.
November 23, 2014, 3:00 p.m.

Human Capital/Il capitale umano (Paolo Virzì 2013)
Paolo Virzì has long been an expert chronicler of familial and social dynamics in films ranging from Caterina in the Big City (2005) to 2010’s First Beautiful Thing. In his latest expert drama, he adapts Stephen Amidon’s Connecticut-set novel and moves the setting to a well-to-do enclave near Milan. Structured in three parts, the story involves the wealthy Bernaschi family whose son Massimiliano is suspected of forcing a bicyclist off the road. With the mystery of just who is culpable for this accident at its center, the story branches off into several expertly told strands that explore class and its privileges. Filled with memorable supporting performances, including Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Luigi Lo Cascio, Valeria Golino and Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Human Capital chillingly shows how the quest for financial status and social standing can lead people to a very low valuation of human life. The frontrunners for the 58th edition of the Davide Awards were Paolo Sorrentino’s foreign-language Oscar winner The Great Beauty and Paolo Virzì’s economic crisis thriller The Human Capital. which Film Movement will release Stateside (Variety). Official Italian entry for Best Foreign Language Film consideration at 87th Academy Awards. Jan. 16-22, 2015 theatrical release in Bay Area.
November 23, 2014, 6:00 p.m.
November 23, 2014, 9:00 p.m.

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