Commedia Italiana:Moviemov Italian Film Festival (4)

Previously, we saw two comedy-on-the-edge fares at the Moviemov:Italian Film Festival. What type of comic fares are we still going to encounter at the festival's third day? One couldn't be more curious. 

• "The Dinner" (La cena, 126 mins) by Ettore Scola

The third (and last) film by Ettore Scola shown at the festival can be considered as a comedy of manners or a sophisticated comedy. And by this time, viewers (especially those who are encountering Scola for the first time) may have already discerned a particular pattern or familiar element in his comedies. In the three Scola films featured in the festival - "The Pizza Triangle", "We All Loved Each Other So Much" and "The Dinner" - we have characters who are lost in love or self-absorbed in their political inclinations or moral conundrums and the humor is the kind that provokes or makes us think, while not altogether failing to tickle our ribs. And of course, the director knows fully well how to explore the possibilities of the film medium. In the third film mentioned, the narrative confinement recalls the kind found in "The Family". Here, the action - and by this, I mean the plot and character development - takes place entirely inside a fine-dine restaurant, managed by an amiable restaurateur named Flora (portrayed by French actress and François Truffaut's later muse Fanny Ardant). And being a public place, the film naturally covers a spectrum of guests dining in the restaurant on one particular night, each one absorbed in their own dramas and affairs - mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, husbands and wives, the old and the young, artists and businessmen, even the waiters and cooks themselves. Viewers have to be patient with this one, though, as this is an extremely talky film:whatever it is that the characters have to deal with in their personal lives, they discuss, argue or chatter about, no flashbacks, flashforwards or occurrences outside the restaurant to illustrate such. It's like an expanded "My Dinner with Andre" - gabfest while dining. The restaurant, in effect, becomes a small society in itself. Even in an activity as basic and as pleasurable as eating, where we are supposed to just sit back and relax, prisms, hues and variations of human nature still never fail to show forth. 

• "The South is Nothing" (Il sud è niente, 90 mins) by Fabio Mollo 

This film, by all means and purposes, is a drama. I'm not even inclined to label it as a comedy-drama. Thus, the festival is not entirely unified by the comedy genre, as what the Italian ambassador pointed out during the event's opening night. Well, not entirely, but just most of it. In any case, I have no issue with this particular "diversion". What initially strikes me in "The South is Nothing" (the debut film of its director) is that it's something that the Dardennes brothers could have done as well. A provincial town, a working-class environment and a feral or morally ambiguous character:In fact, I was somehow thinking of "Rosetta" while I was watching the film. However, unlike the Dardennes brothers, the director, Fabio Mollo, is not concerned with unemployment or some other social dimensions of the characters' behavior, but with the deep scars and wounds inflicted by a personal tragedy on a family. Yet, the manner in which the director handles the situation is similar to the Belgian siblings' style - low-key and deliberate. Most of the hurt and pain remain largely unspoken or are merely suggested. But unlike in the latter's films wherein the subtle drama gradually gathers momentum and force, almost like a suspense-thriller, until it reaches that life-altering apex, here in "The South is Nothing" the drama lacks any real immediacy or inner kinesis. Everything just appears stoic and stale that it runs the danger of inviting nothing but indifference from the viewers. Aside from the fact that the film's basic scenario - a family torn apart by a tragedy - is something we have already encountered countless times. I do admire "unhysterical" dramas. It has always been proven in films that less is more, that what remains barely expressed is what is more reverberating. But if it gets to amount to characters and situations not being able to establish a "connection" with the audience, then the basic purpose of a drama fails - to move and to touch. There's a difference between subtlety and stasis. 

• "Human Capital" (Il Capitale Umano, 109 mins) by Paolo Virzi

This film evokes Juan Antonio Bardem's "Death of a Cyclist" in how the titular tragedy has put a crack in the already fragile lives of two affluent families. Again, this one is not exactly a comedy. Could be a dark comedy, but not entirely. It's in fact more of a nailbiter. Two families are on the brink of losing their business, not to mention that there's an evident strain in their relationship;and the tragic death of a man riding a bicycle (a waiter who was just on his way home from work in a gala attended by the two families) would further put their lives down the drain as it drags the name of one of their members and would put them on the spotlight. The director (whose screenplay was based on a book) puts the events leading up to the mishap and those that happened after from three different perspectives. Thus, "Human Capital" is divided into chapters with each referring to a specific member of the two families - a father, a mother and a daughter - and employs repetition to illustrate the differing perspectives. (Just recently at Eiga Sai, one of the film entries, "The Kirishima Thing", utilized a similar method.) While the narrative style is noteworthy, I have this particular beef about the film that keeps me from fully appreciating its worth:it seems uncertain as to where to focus its gaze. The film appears to want to say a whole lot of things that there's no discernible thematic focus. Is it about money and greed? Or about the decadent morality of the upper-class? Or about the inferior treatment of women? Or about the cruel workings of fate? The film just wants to say it all at once that it falls under the weight of its own ambition. If "Human Capital" wasn't that muddled in its vision, then perhaps it could have been a more compelling morality tale. 

("The Dinner":The restaurant as a small society.)