The Wonders

Living in a remote part of rural Italy, German transplant Wolfgang and his family have all but turned their backs on the rest of society to live on their desolate farm and survive on their ramshackle beekeeping enterprise. Gelsomina, almost a teen and the oldest of his four daughters, is expected to be fully proficient in helping him run the hives and also taking responsibility for her younger siblings whilst her mother and aunt tend to their small market garden. Their life is tough and hard as Wolfgang insists that on an existence which seems to shun any hint of modern agriculture machinery or methods.

One day when the family are taking a dip in the ocean after doing their daily chores they stumble on a film crew making an advertisement for a Reality TV Show called 'Most Traditional Family'. Both the set and the star are very cheesy but in the eyes of Gelsomina and her sisters who have never ever encountered anything remotely glamorous, it's all beauty personified.   The girls desperately want to be able to enter the competition which totally horrifies their father as it stands for everything he is against. However as the local authorities have just been to visit the farm and demand that he either brings it up to European Law standards or lose it, he is sorely tempted as the family are broke and could badly use the prize money. They have already taken in Martin a sullen German boy from a juvenile delinquent program but they got little money from that and anyway his presence disturbed Gelsomina who thought he would replace her  as her father's heir as he seems like the son that he always wanted.

When Gelsomina's secret application to enter the competition gets accepted, an extremely reluctant Wolfgang agrees.  Dressed up in ancient costumes and taking the boat to the isolated island where the filming is to be done in a cave complete with ancient Etruscan paintings gives an even more surreal feeling to this rather odd story.  Here Wolfgang who never shows any emotions to his family becomes yet even more remote as he goes through the motions required of him to try and get the elusive prize money.

This second feature film from German/Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher ('Corpe Celeste') focuses much more on the atmosphere and image of the situation of the family than the rather slight plot.  She works like a artist painting a blank canvass that she fills with a rough and unforgiving countryside littered with struggling peasants trying to eek out a living into which she places one of the worst ubiquitous symbols of contemporary society : the Reality TV Show.  It is a vivid contrast pitching Wolfgang's idealism with that of the greed and crassness that the TV company is inevitably promoting.

The star of the family .... and the movie ....is young Gelsomina who seems the only one set on keeping this family really together . She's matched in part by her sibling Marinella who is four years younger and is so independently minded that she never hesitates about arguing with Gelsomina about what's best for them all.  Although we should mention too the performance of Monica Bellucci (shortly to be seen in 'Spectre' making out with James Bond) as the TV star that mesmerizes them all.

'The Wonders' all looks like a world from a distant past that is pretty to look at for a very short while, but never to actually ever visit.

★★★★★★★

A FIVE STAR LIFE

Irene spends her life nit-picking over every casual slight from any hotel front-desk clerk, or noting exactly how long room service takes to deliver her order before she sticks her thermometer in first the wine and then the soup. That's all before she strips the bed down completely to see how soft and clean the linen is.  She is one tough cookie but it's all in a day's work for her as she jet sets around the globe to see if the world's best hotels should retain their 5 Star rating.

Her obsession with minute detail when she is tasting all this luxury really fulfills her which is just as well as when she lands back home in Italy, her rather empty single life is juxtaposed with all the unruly chaos of the people that surround her.  There is her old flame Andrea who is now her best friend and who jolts Irene out of her complacency of the coziness of their relationship when he announces that he is about to become the father of a child with one of his recent one night stands.  Then there is her rather scatter-brained self-absorbed sister Sylvia whose marriage to her musician husband has grown stagnant which seems to be an excuse for her constantly riling Irene about being an unmarried forty-something-year-old woman. 

This inoffensive and quite charming gentle movie from Italian director  Maria Sole Tognazzi is essentially not a great deal more than a travelogue for all the rather splendid hotels that Irene spends her days dissecting. It also serves as a detailed job description for anyone wishing to take this up as a career.  Asides from that it starts with Irene content with traveling alone through work and life, and after a couple of minor diversions, its ends on exactly the same note.

Asides from the Hotels, it also stars Margherita Buy and Stefano Accorsi who had previously worked together in 'His Secret Life' & 'Saturn In Opposition'. Plus a refreshing cameo performance from Brit actor Lesley Manville that looked like it may liven up the pace of the piece somewhat but then when her character gets killed off suddenly, so does all hope of any real fun for poor Irene and us.

★★★★★

HUMAN CAPITAL aka Il Capitale Umano

On a snowy wintry night in a small town in the suburbs of Milan, after he has worked at an Awards Evening for the local school, a waiter jumps on his bike to make his way home.  However before he can get there, he is run over by a hit-and-run driver who leaves him at the side of the road to die. This tragedy affects many more people than the ones involved in the accident, and this complicated multi-layered drama is the tale of a number of people from all walks of life who end up embroiled.

Director/screenwriter Paolo Virzì tells this story in three chapters through different sets of eyes, and each re-telling of the same events has its own particular focus.  

The first one is 'Dino' and it starts 6 months earlier when Dino is dropping off his teenage daughter Serana at her boyfriend's family fancy villa. Massimiliano and she go to the same school together even though they come from totally opposite ends of the social scale.

Massimiliano's father Giovanni runs a major international hedge-fund, and Dino a small-time real estate broker is desperate to be allowed to invest in the fund.  As it happens that particular day Giovanni is short of a tennis partner and so the anxious-to-please Dino wangles his way on the court and into the Fund.  He mortgages his business and house to find the necessary minimum ¢500,000 investment without telling his new second wife who is expecting a child.  You know its not going to end up well for him even then.

The second chapter is named 'Carla' after Giovanni's insecure socialite wife who is bored to tears as she is always left to her own devices by her neglectful wheeler-dealer husband. An ex-amateur actress, Carla persuades an indulgent Giovanni to save the local dilapidated theater for the sake of the town's culture, but he does it to make a quick buck on the property.  She at least gets to have a one night stand with the theater director as a way of compensation.

The final chapter is the one on 'Serena' who has been keeping dumb to the Police on who actually drove Massimilani's car the night it hit the driver. This is where all the loose ends of the story get tied together and as the Fund fails both Dino and Giovanni's wives act like they are both completely in shock at discovering their husband's greed. Dino had believed the myth that easy money was just that, and it would bring him happiness too, whilst Giovanni used it as a tool simply to buy anything and anybody he wanted, including his son's freedom.

This very Italian tale was surprisingly adapted from an American best-selling novel in which the action had been set in Connecticut. Avarice is avarice wherever it is. Although the emphasis was on the menfolk, in this movie, it was the three women's performances that were the attention grabbers: newbie Serena Ossola in her first screen role as Serena, Valeria Golino in the small but vital part of Roberta, Dino's wife, and the stunning Valeria Bruni Tedeschi who picked up the Best Actress Award at Tribeca Film Festival for her excellent portrayal of the neurotic Carla.

The morals may be loose but the pace is fast and consuming in this look at capitalism in crisis.  It's a sorry tale, but one that is told very well.

★★★★★★★★

TWICE BORN

This mini-epic war melodrama starts when all the action is over and middle-aged Gemma is having breakfast with her husband in their rather comfortable home in Italy when the phone rings. It's an old friend who is inviting her to a special Photography Exhibit in Sarajevo.  Not much is spoken between the couple after she puts the phone down, but when she says that she will take Pietro their 16 year old son with her, the anguished look on his face shows he is clearly not happy.

Neither is Pietro who would rather be hanging out with his friends at home than return to the country he left whilst still a baby.  Why this journey is important enough for Gemma that she rides roughshod  over both her husband and son's wishes becomes clear in a series of flashbacks that take us back to the start of the story.

As a mature college student Gemma was in Sarajevo just before the 1984 Olympic Games and to help do research for her thesis she hired Gojko a local charismatic bohemian as a driver and guide. One of his hippy friends was a much younger American war- photographer who impossibly falls in love with her at first sight and then wears down all her objections with his relentless and overly enthusiastic pursuit. So much so that she eventually agrees to marry him which makes him abundantly happy.  Well, that is until after a couple of miscarriages and they discover that Gemma is incapable of having a baby.

Talk of adoption for the child that Diego is a little too keen to have marks the start of him getting less ardent about what he had constantly being declaring was his undying love for Gemma up to now.   And this is the point where the story lines start to get less clear, as we know that Gemma does become a 'mother' at the height of the war's escalation, but it's not until the final moments of the movie do we really learn how that happened.

Meanwhile back in the present Pietro constantly fights with his mother as he is bright enough to know that she has only given him the brief edited highlights of how he came to be born, and as such he carries a major resentment for both her and this country that he despises.

Helmed by Italian actor turned director Sergio Castelitto (who also plays Gemma's husband) from a script based in his wife Margaret Mazzantini's best selling novel.  It is the presence of Penelope Cruz as Gemma that is responsible for making this so watchable even when the plot lines start losing their focus.  She does as always with all her European movies really shine like an old-fashioned movie stars.  Sad then that the usually reliable and talented actor Emile Hirsch was so badly miscast as the young Diego who was overly enthusiastic to the point of being almost annoying. And they had the most un-sensual naked lovemaking scenes that showed the total lack of chemistry between the two of them.

Beautifully shot, and the depiction of the tragedies of the war were a poignant reminder of that recent painful period in Sarajevo's history.

If you are a fan of Ms Cruz then you still want to see this one (despite Mr Hirsch).

★★★★★★

Available from Amazon

THE GREAT BEAUTY aka LA GRANDE BELLAZZA

There is not just only one person who could make claim to being 'the great beauty' in Paolo Sorrentino's stunning new masterpiece that focuses on Rome's fast set as everybody is completely obsessed with being desired and admired by all. Well, by everyone in their clique at least. At the epicentre of all this frantic partygoing is Jep,  a great wit who is living of the reputation of the acclaimed novella he wrote decades previously and whose claim to fame now is that he knows everyone in society who matters. He also has the added good fortune of a stunning apartment with an enormous roof deck that overlooks the ruins of the Coliseum.  

The movie opens with a party in progress on Jep's deck : this one is to celebrate his 65th birthday ... not that this crowd really need an excuse to party all night.  The scene is like one glorious carnival with its cast full of eccentrics and oddities and with everyone intent on their version of what constitutes a good time. They are all completely self-absorbed which makes Jep their natural leader as he has the biggest ego of them all. It's a tale of decadence and gross self-indulgence of heavily botoxed middle-aged Euro-trash who are still living as they did in the past before resorting to be titled aristocrats for hire.

Sorrentino sets up a series of scenarios, some of which like the dinner party with the cooking obsessed Bishop are hilariously funny, and others with a Japanese tourist dropping dead in the midday sun at the mere sight of Rome, are a tad too obscure. Together they all add up to what is like the libretto of a grand opera, with its dependence on such high drama, which hits you hard with its sense of love and loss, and for its intense, unbearable melancholy at the end.

It's a total opulent visual smorgasbord that almost tips into sensual overload at times with it's highly meticulous stylised details : a sheer delight.  It's so easy to see why every critic compares Mr Sorrentino to Fellini as he is unquestionably his natural successor. It helps too that he uses his favorite actor Toni Servillo as Jep who wants to be Peter Pan yet mocks everyone else who wants the same: its a stunning performance that it would be hard to imagine anyone else in the role.

The Great Beauty is one of those rare movies that so utterly overwhelm you with awe and unfettered amazement that you simply have to view it a second time (at least) .    It has been quite rightly nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Foreign Language Movie : go see it ..... at least once.

★★★★★★★★★★

SHUN LI AND THE POET

Shun Li is a barmaid at small working men's cafe in a sleepy lagoon town just north of Venice.  Her job is the price that she must pay for being able to leave China for which she is totally beholden to her shady Chinese employers,  and once they decide her debt is paid they will bring over her small son that she had to leave back home.

One of her regular customers is Bepi, an old fisherman who had immigrated from Yugoslavia many years,  and was now a recent widower. Known to sprout rhyming verse to his chums, his nickname in the Bar is 'the Poet'.   He took a shine to the shy young Chinese girl who seemed like a exotic addition to their wee traditional Italian community.

When their innocent friendship became fuel for gossip, the other men in the Bar teased Bepi relentlessly, but Shun Li's employers forbade her to continue as they wanted to maintain a low profile in the town. They threatened her with a move to another city and another job where she would have to start paying off her debt all over again.

This quiet and understated drama directed and co-written by Andrea Segre with its sparse dialogue allows the settings of the Lagoons to rightly take center place. The stoic way all the locals just carry on regardless when the city floods and they sit knee deep in water in the cafe just as normal sipping their Grapa is wonderfully bizarre.

The relationship between these two totally different immigrants evolves through loneliness and a need for a close friendship that respects self-imposed limits as neither of them want it to be anything less than pure.  When Shun-Li is forced to stop communicating with Bepi it comes at a heavy price, strangely enough more for him than her.

All at a gentle pace in the most beautiful of settings, this is a quiet wee gem of a movie.

Available now on DVD

★★★★★★★

REALITY

Luciano is a gregarious fishmonger with his own Stall near his home in one of the old quarters of Naples. He is not just one of the few men in his sprawling family of numerous aunts and cousins, but he is always the life of soul of their group.  One day when his wife and three young children are shopping in a nearby Mall with the entire family in tow, they come across a TV Production Company who are looking for people to try out for 'Grande Fratello' Italy's own smash hit 'Big Brother'. The kids phone Luciano, and encouraged by the family, persuade their Dad to immediately leave the Stall and rush over to audition.

He arrives to late but as he recently had a brief encounter with Enzo a former star of the Show who is hosting the event, he persuades him to get the Producer to still let him audition.

A few weeks later Luciano gets a phone call inviting him to the Cinecittà Studios in Rome for a follow up interview and screen test. When he emerges after this is over to greet his anxious family, he tells them that all the other applicants had been given a mere five minutes, whilst his session with the Producers had lasted over an hour.  This has convinced him that being offered  a place in the Big Brother House is a mere formality.

Word travels faster than him, and he returns home to Naples to tumultuous applause like the conquering hero that TV stars are feted like these days.  Over the next few weeks he is congratulated by the whole neighborhood whilst he waits for 'the call'.  As the weeks drag on he starts to develop a paranoia that the TV Company want to check out his story and also test him to see what type of man he is. So he believes that every single stranger he spots in his locale is spying on him to see if he is in fact a good soul .... and eventually as he is convinced that this is the one thing stopping him being on the TV Show, he sells up the Fish Stall, and much to the consternation of his wife, starts to give away all their possessions to homeless people in the street.

For a man like Luciano whose life up to now has been scrambling for a living in a decaying inner city the lure of the high glossy shiny life depicted in a Reality TV Show is too much to pass up on.  And it seems like the struggle to get their at all costs is not just for himself but all the others like him.  Like the Papal procession he encounters on his way to break into the Big Brother House, it bears no relevance at all to the life that he and most other people lead.

The story behind the movie itself is equally as interesting, directed and co-written by Matteo Garrone, and its a far cry from his last bleak movie 'Gomorrah' a harrowing fictional look at organized crime ....one of the best films of 2008.  And his stunning lead actor Aniello Arena who was so central to making this work, is currently serving a life sentence in prison for murder, and was given special permission to be allowed out on a daily basis to shoot this movie.

It's a bittersweet comedy/drama about how obsession can lead to desperation  ..... 'this is our chance' Luciano screams at his wife, but by then she wants to let go. And we want him too as well.

★★★★★★★★

GOOD AS YOU

It's New Year Eve in Rome, and Adelchi is fussing around his apartment making sure everything is just perfect as he has a hot date. He's been chatting online with Claudio for some time now  ..... or has he? Turns out that his intended is rather an introvert so his room-mate sister has been pretending to him, and she only confesses all to her brother that very night before sending off to meet the man who is already besotted with (the idea of) him.

Adelchi lives with his neurotic sister Sylvia so rather leave her alone on such a night, he asks her to stay for dinner and also asks Claudio to bring his sister too. Francesca is a lesbian so she in turn invites her latest squeeze Marina, and her butch lesbian room-mate Mara.  If that is not confusing enough .... and not quite the first date I would have wanted .... Adelchi also invites his best friend campy Marco and his muscled Argentinean Rent Boy boyfriend Nico.

Maybe I should have started this review by telling you this hyper frenetic and rather confusing comedy is a farce!  And a very Italian one too boot where I would like to generously believe that the funny bits simply got lost in translation.

This is a gay comedy that has every single stereotype we have ever known .... and each one of them seems louder and larger than life. As the story follows these couples over the next year there are lots of major histrionics and very silly plot lines that may make you smile sometimes, but will mainly just drive you to distraction.

Hailed in Italy as the first totally gay comedy and it  gained what I think is a really fabulous review from the extreme Catholic group 'Milita Christ' who said it was 'a squalid apology of anti-natural and harmful behaviour'.   They should so put that on the poster as it would fill any theater.

It's a very camp piece of escapism that is about a very unrealistic group of gay people who I frankly didnt think existed anymore.  But maybe they do.  In Italy.


★★★★

CAESAR MUST DIE

Shakespeare's play 'Julius Caeser' about the Dictator who was murdered by by a gang of conspiring Senators who wanted to stop him running Rome as if he were King was the most perfect choice to be performed by a Prison drama group.  Especially this one in Rebibbia Prison High Security Wing outside Rome which comprises of a rough bunch of inmates most of whom are serving life sentences for a variety of very serious crimes who found they could relate to the plot a lot more than they could have ever imagined.

The veteran Italian filmmaking Taviani Brothers take on the project of producing the play and also making a film of the whole process from start to finish.

Near the beginning of the movie each of the prisoners who want to take part are seen auditioning in close up : it's totally captivating watching these murderers and drug traffickers put such raw emotion into their five minutes in front of the director to ensure that they  are picked.  Once the play is cast and they start rehearsals in earnest, they all have to make use of any free spots in the Prison as the theater is still being re-furbished.  This in in fact adds to the intensity of the drama especially as so much of it is filmed in black and white.

Even in the early run throughs all the performances are electrifying and frankly its nigh on impossible at times to convince one's self that not only are they not professional actors but are in fact illiterate criminals. One of them, Salvatore Striano a former inmate who came back to play Brutus, is so spell-bindingly wonderful that I even felt the tears swell up at one moment.

I'm sure Shakespearean purists will shudder at the liberties that the Taverinis (and their collaborator Fabio Cavalli who also played the director on screen) took with the text, but I have never ever seen such a exciting version of the play.  The one very sad note is after their triumphant final performance they are led back to be locked up in their solitary cells for the rest of their lives.

It deservedly won the prestigious Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival  ..... go see this 'murder must foul' it is a remarkable unique movie that I promise will totally enthrall you.

★★★★★★★★★

THE FIRST BEAUTIFUL THING

Bruno is a unhappy and somewhat troubled middle-aged college Professor living in Milan with a girlfriend he cannot commit too and the only way that he makes his days bearable is by taking prescription drugs illegally obtained at a local park.  One day Valeria his sister turns up on his doorstep to tell him that their mother is terminally ill and that he must come home to Livorno.  It seems that Bruno has avoided his family, especially his mother, since he left many years ago and it takes some hefty persuasion to make him make the journey despite the urgency of it.

Clearly Bruno has issues, and as the story unwinds through a whole series of flashbacks, we learn that with this complex family history with its many layers, he certainly wasn't the only one. Anna his mother was always a real beauty which was a source of conflict with her abusive husband whom she left when the children were very young. She was at best naive and always managed to hook up with a succession handsome men who either abused or neglected her before throwing her out.  The children where snatched back and forth between her and their father and somehow what ever befell them, the ever optimistic Anna always believed and promised them that things would be better tomorrow.

As a kid, Bruno was intelligent and artistic but he seemed to have inherited the grumpiness of his father, and certainly his present life yields him no joy.  But as soon as he spends time with his dying mother whom he was stayed away from all this years in a huff, he gradually realizes through her about some of the pleasures of life that he has been missing.  He eventually finds it hard to resist Anna's irrepresible gift for happiness that he has for so long begrudged.

In this rich Italian family comedy/drama that spans some four decades there are plenty of twists and turns that are not always predictable especially towards the end.  It has all the makings of a glorious melodrama .... have your kleenexs at the ready ... but as multi-faceted the plot scenarios were, they were extremely realistic and anything but exaggerated as the term implies.

It's the type of movie that I always think that Italian filmmakers are the masters of.  In fact it was their official entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Movie last year. Beautifully written and directed Paolo Vizri, it is superbly acted by a brilliant cast that includes legendary Italian Actress Stefania Sandrelli whose lengthy resume includes Bertolucci's 'The Conformist' in 1970. 

Coming in at 2 hours and 2 minutes long, have a large glass of wine ..... besides the kleenex that is ..... but you wont regret it.

★★★★★★★★

CORPO CELESTE

I rarely walk  out of Screenings at Sundance and I always sit to the (sometimes bitter) end hoping that even the worst movie will redeems itself before the final Credits roll. This however, is one such film that I wish I hadn't wasted a whole 100 minutes on.

This is a very weird cold fish of an Italian  movie about  a poor thirteen year old girl who has recently moved back from Switzerland and is trying to make sense of her life which is intrinsically structured around the Church.  Along with other disaffected students in this depressingly impoverished Town in Southern Italy the main part of her day is going to catechism class in preparation for her Confirmation. The priest however is more concerned with badgering his poor parishioners to vote for the far Right Forza Party Candidate in the upcoming Elections. And meanwhile the church cat gave birth to kittens which they put in a plastic bag and ......!  Did I mention it was Catholic? That should say it all!  

If you insist on seeing it (and why would you?) then follow young Marta's lead and put a blindfold on and pray!

★

ITALY, LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT

In 2009 I remembered being totally enamored with an irrepressible young Italian gay couple that documented the struggle of acceptance of gay rights in their Country and being totally horrified about the vitriol and power of the Far Right Political Parties that seem to make the American Evangelistic Conservatives seem like real sweethearts by comparison.  One of the most impressive things about their award-winning movie 'Suddenly Last Winter' was Luca and Gustav’s unceasing optimism and their determination to succeed.

Now they are back with another extremely watchable movie as they question whether they want to remain living in Italy today, or follow the exodus of many of their creative and talented friends who have moved to Berlin, London, Barcelona as they believe its only way to have the future they want.  Their concerns are not just about the high cost of living and the lack of job security, and the sheer indifference to human rights, but also of a reactionary political system that empowered the morally corrupt Berlusconi to remain in charge for so long.

The couple cannot agree what is best for them. Gustav believes the time has come for them to go abroad, whilst Luca is convinced that there are many good reasons to stay and that Italy is full of passionate and committed people who every day carry on a silent battle to change things for the better.
They compromise by agreeing to take a  road trip around the whole country for six months to see if they can fall in love with it all over again.

They set off on their journey in a tiny old Fiat 500 in search of stories and people, and to try and rediscover what heart the country still has.  They find it much divided and full of contradictions and the struggle they uncover as people simple try to survive from day to day is widely different  from the elegant glamorous trouble free country that we foreigners perceive it to be.  Its shocking to discover that there are still areas in contemporary Italy where if any honest elected politician dares to instigate any change they will  have their car/house torched by the Mafioso and have to contend constant threats to their lives.  Its not totally all gloom and doom that they uncover and there are glimmer of hopes like in Bari where the new Governor is not just a Communist and Catholic but is also openly Gay and is actually getting things done. 

After hearing peoples stories, seeing the mountains of abandoned toxic waste, the unfinished unwanted monstrous structures which were started with European Grants that suddenly disappeared, and whole swathes of coastline littered with illegal buildings, the couple appreciate that have a great deal to consider before they can decide what to do when their journey is finished.  Gustavo is a Northerner and is very pragmatic and has a very strong political sensibility, whist Luca being Roman is sarcastic and fatalistic.  They do make a great pair.

Do they choose Berlin or Rome to live in next?  They try and keep us guessing, but it’s not spoiling it by telling you its Rome, as it’s clear from their movie that despite all Italy's issues and  problems etc they love it as much as they love each other.

Great wee film doing the Festival Circuit mainly in Italy right now, but it is available to download in Itunes.it (if you are clever enough not to need sub-titles) and they have a Facebook page where you can find all future screenings. It's so worth seeing, and it may make you even (re) appreciate the country that you call home too.

★★★★★★★★

MOSTLY MARTHA

Sometimes its good to revisit old friends.  And I would consider Martha one.  Mostly that is.  My timing was bad though as I started to watch one of the most mouth-watering movies about cooking that I can recall just as I sat down to eat my Mexican Take Out Dinner.

Martha is a cold fish, and apart from her habit of skulking off to hang out in the walk in deep freeze of the chic Hamburg restaurant where she is head Chef, we never really know why.  The movie opens with her lying on a couch having her weekly session with a therapist and he stops her in full flow as she is reeling off recipe after recipe and he asks her why she is there. She replies that its because Frida her Boss, for some inexplicable reason, said it was either that or the sack.  By the end of the movie, we know that the Boss was right.

Martha’s small world consists of work and more work, and she is totally at a loss for what to do with herself on her weekly day-off.  Her world gets shaken up however when her sister is killed in an automobile accident and suddenly she has to care for Lina her 8 year old newly orphaned niece.  Pining for the mother lost and the father she never knew, Lina at least has a reason to be perpetually angry.

When Frida employs Mario a new chef to assist in the kitchen during this difficult time, Martha takes umbrage thinking her position is under threat and treats her new colleague badly.  Meanwhile Lina will neither put up with babysitters or eat any food at all, and when Martha takes her to work one night, it is Mario that coaxes her into eating and getting a smile back on the young girl's face.  The nightly visits become regular routines as does being late for school every day where the exhausted Lina sleeps through every lesson.  The Headmaster says that this must stop, as does Frida, causing temper tantrums at home resulting in Lina trying to run away.

Lina contrives to have Mario come over to cook for her and Martha and the icy maiden starts to thaw.  The impending romance is not going to be easy, and frankly it's the one key element in this story that somehow doesn't gel.  It would have been much more convincing having her falling for the architect neighbor!

When Martha had first taken Lina in she promised that she would somehow find her father even though all she knew was that his name was Giuseppe and he lived in Italy. And she actually manages to do just that and the very morning after she and Mario have had a sleepover (!) Giuseppe turns up on the front door to claim the daughter he has never seen.

And they all live happily ever after.  Eventually.  The clue is in the tip that Martha gives Giuseppe when she warns him that Lina is like her ‘and difficult to get to know’.  Very true, but in fairness the parts of Martha that we do get to know, even if she never really thawed, are quite intriguing mainly due to the fact that she is played so wonderfully by the incredibly talented Martina Gedick. 

Martha is not a typical romantic comedy heroine as the story centers so much on her helplessness around children, but there is something beautifully touching about the way she approaches dealing with Lina, and the rest of her life, by just cooking wonderful food. It nearly works.

Revisiting it was a joy, and I still cannot think why on earth Hollywood insisted on remaking it in English and renaming it ‘No Reservations’ and having Ms Gedick’s subtle and moving performance replaced by the brassy (and anything BUT subtle) Catherine Zeta-Jones.  It’s like substituting the Foie Gras Martha cooked with a Big Mac!

Since this was made in 2001, if you hadn’t noticed that Ms Gedick's star has risen even higher and some of the many movies she has starred in since  include the Oscar winning 'The Life of Others' and 'The Bader Meinhof Complex' .

★★★★★★★★

WE HAVE A POPE

At the start of Nanni Moretti’s wonderful rich and glorious new movie the College of Cardinals are shuttered away in the Vatican to go through the traditional ritual of choosing a new Pope in great secrecy now that the last one has shuffled off his mortal coil.  As the camera scans down the long line of these scarlet clad old men each one of them is desperately praying so he doesn’t get chosen.  They all look like that cannot cope with pressure of this enormous task even though they will inevitably choose yet another really old man who has barely a few years left on earth and thus will soon be back to sit through the whole painful process yet once again before you can say many Hail Marys!

This time there are a few rounds of voting stalemate and the results are evenly divided between the predicted front-runners. Then with one accord a large majority switch their secret votes to elect the  relatively unknown Cardinal Melville as a compromise candidate. Of course he is not that at all, as everyone keeps repeating, rather it is ‘the will of God’.  And it’s because of this fact, that a rather distraught Melville accepts the job of being the next Pontiff

The white smoke is signaled from the Vatican to the waiting crowds in St Peters Square below that the election is over and everybody waits for the new Pope to make his first appearance in the balcony to make his address to the faithful.  He is all bedecked in his new white papal finery and so one of the cardinals goes ahead and to announce him but midway through the speech the Pope sitting in an antechamber loses his nerve and screams out loud and runs back to his private apartments, leaving everyone hanging in mid air.

Doctors are called and they declare the Pope physically well, so they send for a psychotherapist even though they are not really approved of by the church, well the Catholic one anyway.  There is one a hilarious scene where the Cardinals place so many obstacles in the psychiatrist’s path that it is nigh on impossible for him to conduct a proper consultation. He does however recommend that maybe his wife, who is also a Psychiatrist who is obsessed with the theory of ‘parental deficit’, could maybe be more helpful to the Pope’s present state. That said the Cardinals then advise the hapless Shrink that for obvious security reasons he cannot be allowed to leave the Vatican in case any word about the Pope’s state leaked out.  In fact despite all the media speculation, even the identity of the new Pope had not been revealed yet and they claimed he was still locked away praying and seeking help from God for his new task.

In great secrecy the Pope is dressed in ‘civvies’ and whisked away to the Psychiatrist’s Consulting Room for a private appointment.  He tells his minder that he needs some fresh air so will walk for awhile but he  then suddenly manages give them the slip, and is at last alone in Rome.  As no one has the faintest idea who he is, he soon becomes just another anonymous stranger in the city.  He befriends members of a local theatrical troupe and professes that he has really wanted to be an actor all his life.

Meanwhile back in the cloistered confines of the Vatican the frustrated Psychiatrist takes it upon himself to organize card games and a  Volleyball Tournament that not only distracts the Clerics but works them up into unaccustomed excitable competitive fervor.  The Pope’s PR man hasn't fessed up to the Cardinals that the Boss is missing so he secretly installs one of the Swiss Guards in the Pope’s private apartments telling him to just keep ruffling the curtains so the waiting crowds below, and the Cardinals,  will think he is there and meditating.

It is a very delightful tragicomedy that certainly makes fun out of the situation and all the pomp and circumstance of the Vatican, but is never anything less that respectful to the Church itself.  The wonderful French actor Michel Piccoli who brings such love to the lead role makes this highly emotional story plausible.  Aged 86, this veteran of some over 200 movies, and winner of countless of Awards would have so got my vote for Pope too.  The psychiatrist was played by writer/director Morreti a multi-talented award-winning filmmaker that excels both sides of the camera (Check out 'Quiet Chaos' I blogged last year).  I was so impressed with all the shots of the Vatican that I was convinced that they must have made the entire movie in situ instead of a Sound Stage at the Cinecitte Studios as I later found out.

And then there is the final scene of the movie that I was totally unprepared for and which took the wind from my sails.  It took the story to another level, and if I was cynical (!) and this had been a Hollywood production then I would have assumed that they had set themselves up to make a sequel.  But it isn’t, so I guess we will never know what happened next. God willing or not!

I am not religious at all but when it comes to movies I do have catholic tastes (note the small c) and this is definitely one that fits in with that.

Unmissable.


★★★★★★★★★