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FRANCESCA ARCHIBUGI: THE HUMMINGBIRD/IL COLIBRÌ (2022)[

OPENING NIGHT FILM


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BÉATRICE BEJO, PIERFRANCESCO FAVINO IN THE HUMMINGBIRD

A swirling tale of unfulfillment

The opening-night screening of the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series for 2023 in New York is Francesca Archibugi’s latest feature The Hummingbird/Il colibrì. It is a film adapted from Sandro Veronesi’s Strega Prize-winning novel, described in the festival blurb as "an at once epic and intimate chronicle of love and familial ups and downs that spans six decades and three generations," and it features Pierfrancesco Favino, Bérenice Bejo, Laura Morante, Nanni Moretti, and others, notably the Polish-born Kasia Smutniak as Marina Molitor, a fiery, in fact crazy, Balkan former airline hostess who is the wife of Marco Carrera, the protagonist played by Favino.

This is a film that is fascinating but ultimately disappointing. A Spanish critic is quoted as saying it's "easy to follow." That was more a boast than a statement. It jumps back and forward in time over a half century in the lives of Marco, the crazy Balkan wife, and Marco's longtime platonic love from next door Luisa Lattes, played as an adult by Bejo. Nanni Moretti appears early on presenting himself to Marco, a doctor, as Carradori, Marco's wife's psychiatrist, to tell him he is "in great danger." We don't find out why. He has come to question Marco about his long time love affair, or love for, Luisa Lattes. We don't find out why he does that either. But this introduces the movie's main thread. The film also depicts Marco's relationship with his daughter Adele and his granddaughter Mirajin. Later in life he explores a hitherto unexpected talent for gambling in high-stakes poker games. Carradori will continue to reappear as he and Marco are provided with gray hair and wrinkles to designate later times in their lives. Acres of aging makeup and prosthetic wrinkles have been distributed among cast members for the later-stage scenes.

Sandro Veronesi's source novel won the coveted Strega literary prize, which more than explains why Archibrugi''s film came into existence. Literary prizes loom large in Italy as in France, and this is like the Booker Prize in England, only more so, in addition to which Veronesi has won two of them. I looked up two reviews of the novel. The Guardian one says it is everything wonderful that fiction can be. The Kirkus review is far more skeptical, saying it is "an intriguing but ultimately disappointing experiment in fictional biography." The Kirkus review also reveals that in the book "We find out that Marco fell in love with Luisa when she was 13 and he was 20," and glosses over this troubling detail; it is eliminated in the film.

The novel uses multiple formats to tell its time-shifting story, third-person narrative, letters, dialogue, and other fragments. The film simply makes rapid shifts: you may experience whiplash. It's helped that someone has been found who looks very much like Favino as a young man. It's not so hard to recognize Marco and Luisa at different ages, just hard to see where the story is going.

What about the title? A peculiar detail is that Marco as a boy is small for his age. His father insists, over the objections of his mother (Laura Morante) on his being sent for growth hormone shots, which have a dramatic effect. Because of his small size he's called "the hummingbird." But later, Marina, in a moment when not smashing things and shouting, snidely says Marco is like a hummingbird because he spends all his effort to stay in one place. She finds him stagnated.

Not a flaw of this film, which is in constant motion. But in the end not much that matters to us really happens. This winds up being a glossy but unrewarding watch, which Italian reviews have noted is another elaborate portrait of the Italian upper bourgeoisie. Marco's family is wealthy; so is that of their neighbors to whom Luisa Lattes belongs. When all else failed I enjoyed looking at the handsome, spacious rooms and the large abstract paintings in the mature Marco's house, which are very nice.

Pierfrancesco Favino is the new Italian cinematic everyman, notably seen as Tommaso Buscetta, the Sicilian mobster turned state's witness, in Bellocchio's 2019 The Traitor, and the expatriate who returns to Naples after forty years in Mario Martone's 2022 Nostalgia, where his performances define the kind of solid, restrained soulfulness that he also displays here. He is not suave and handsome like earlier Italian leading men but there is something deeply comforting and watchable about him. One Italian critic says he "cannibalizes" The Hummingbird. Perhaps so. But this dominance helps keep the film from being completely scattered. Nonetheless apart the Balkan wife's explosions and Bejo's soulful objections to her longtime platonic lover Marco's excessive restraint - he says this keeps them from hurting anybody but she asks "What about us?" - there is a paucity of emotional depth and a damning failure to get to the bottom of any of the personalities. This is a danger of storytelling that is constantly shifting about. Complicated storytelling may impress, especially with a lot of good actors and beautiful mise-en-scène, but it is rarely storytelling that ultimately satisfies.

The Hummingbird/Il colibrì, 126 mins., debuted at Toronto Sept. 2022, also opening at Rome Oct. 2022, released theatrically in Italy Oct. 14, 2022. Screened for this review as part of the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema June 1-8, 2023 series at Lincoln Center (with Cinnecittà) where it was also the opening night film.
Thursday, June 1 at 7:00pm (Q&A with Francesca Archibugi)
Wednesday, June 7 at 6:00pm

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


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