Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Sun Jun 10, 2007 7:34 pm 
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A distinctive surreal stylist, but this one doesn't work

"Deadpan black comedy" (Peter Bradshaw) is a good starting point for a description of the Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino, but the first thing that strikes you is his distinctive visual style, which is cold and stylized yet sensual (clearly aided by fine cinematographer Luca Bigazzi). It is also surreal. He has a taste for the empty spaces of Rome’s fascist-era landscaping, and the opening shot is of a nun buried up to her neck in sand. Sorrentino frames shots very precisely. He likes bright, clear images, panoramic shots in which faces appear close up from one corner, or peeking in from the bottom of the frame. He returns frequently in The Family Friend to girls in uniform playing volleyball, very bright, but cut up by the slats of a Venetian blind, and in slow motion.

Sorrentino’s protagonist, Geramea de Geremei (veteran stage actor Giocomo Rizzo), a repulsive little man in his sixties with long hair tied back in a knot, his right arm in a cast, who walks always with a little plastic bag in that hand swinging back and forth. He lives with his fat semi-invalid mother (Clara Bindi) in a dark slum apartment in Rome, and is a tailor and has a little sewing shop, but mainly is an usuraio, a small time loan shark. Known ironically as "Heart-of-Gold," he frequently quotes little observations from Readers Digest and pretends to love his client-victims, always saying “my last thought will be of you.” He loans amounts not in excess of 50,000 euros and he has always intentionally avoided the risk of going beyond that level, though a corporation tries to borrow a million from him for a project to install bidets in an American hotel chain. This, Gino (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), a longtime partner who lives in a wrecked trailer and wears American western clothing, and a young woman (Laura Chiatti) Geramea criminally abuses on the verge of her wedding (for which he has loaned the money), are potential sources of the little man’s undoing. The film’s outspoken world-view is that everybody is dishonest and nobody is happy. Even the pathetic borrowers are dishonest—for example, a sick woman who borrows 9,00 euros for cancer treatment in Paris, who then gambles it away playing bingo.

Geramea is a viciously manipulative little creature (someone calls him a “rat” but notes that such words are insufficient), a kind of free-lance Mafioso. Rizzo plays the role with quiet conviction, never faltering in delivering Geramea’s elaborate speeches in which he puts down or lectures his clients. He has no friends. He is a small but inextinguishable force of nature. He is a deeply repulsive protagonist, yet there is no question about the fact that he is blandly accepted (those who don’t like him have one alternative: they can go to someone known as “Il Pirata,” the Pirate), and he fits naturally into Sorrentino’s world, a world in which the majority of people are neither wise nor honest.

Whoever decided to schedule a showing of The Family Friend right after the warm and turbulent Angelo Longoni Caravaggio had a sadistic sense of humor. Watching Sorrentino’s film after Longoni’s was like being taken from a friendly party into a foul pissoir. But a brightly lit one with distinctive fittings which, upon examination, had a certain aesthetic appeal. Sorentino’s style is original—despite alleged influences from Melville and Antonioni (what exactly do those two have in common?). The director is willing—perhaps all too much so—to move into the riskier realms of the repulsive—most notably in the scenes between the beautiful bride (Chiatti) and Geramea, but many in other small moments as well, such as the recurrent images of some disgusting fluid dropping into a pan in Geramea’s apartment. The sense of the visual is so sharp that Sorrentino seems able to go anywhere, particularly given his ability to coax out distinctive lead performances from his actors. However the film has certain weaknesses compared to the virtues, by report, of the director’s 2004 noir, The Consequences of Love (Le consequenze dell’amore), which received admiring comments at Cannes and from critics when shown in England. Reading a little too much as no more than a series of vignettes, The Family Friend has a somewhat lackadaisical rhythm, and even though the screws are tightened on Gerameo rather dramatically, Sorrentino doesn’t seem to know exactly how to end his story , perhaps because the setup has focused on too many different loan situations and characters.

The Family Friend (L’amico di famiglia) seems surer of its visual style than of its dramatic trajectory, and neither redeems nor condemns its protagonist, but simply leaves him up in the air. There are, amid the ruins of the structure, too many loose ends. What does that nun in the sand mean? And what is the point of a fat woman in her underwear blindly batting soccer balls hanging from the ceiling by threads? And in the end, who cares? Sorrentino may run the risk of indulging in cleverness for its own sake, but he is clearly gifted and unique, and will bear watching. He represents the darker side of post-Cinecittà Italian filmmaking and invites comparison with Matteo Garrone and the older Pupi Avati. But their work has virtues that Friend of the Family lacks.

Shown as part of the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series at Lincoln Center June 2007.

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