I write for an Italian cinema and culture magazine, SupergaCinema http://www.supergacinema.it. For my work last week in Los Angeles, I attended the screenings of several new Italian films during Cinecittà Luce http://www.cinecitta.com/index.asp and American Cinematheque’s http://www.americancinematheque.com/ festival “Cinema Italian Style.” www.cinemaitalianstyle.org/
Two of this year’s, Edoardo Winspeare’s I Galantuomini (Brave Men) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iLJHmqznCg and Marco Amenta’s La Siciliana Ribelle (The Sicilian Girl) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-roDzGdZ30 are mob stories. A third, Italy’s official candidate for the 2010 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, Giuseppe Tornatore’s Baarìa http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTKhPCdu9ag shows us three generations of a poor family in a Mafia-dominated province of Palermo. Sadly, I didn’t make it to the screening of Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere (Win!) www.youtube.com/watch – it was a real stand-out at Cannes... but I did take my daughter to Nico Cirasola’s Focaccia Blues www.youtube.com/watch, a truly tasty treat. All of the films are in Italian with English subtitles.
Baarìa is a sweet film that could have been called Nostalgìa. At times it feels like flipping through someone else’s family photo album, page… by… page. Baarìa reminded me a lot of Tornatore’s unabashedly romantic Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988), but it’s well worth renting. Roberto Scianna and Margareth Madé are a pleasure to watch, and Tornatore’s real talent is in showing us the beauty in even the ugliest facets of his hometown.
Before diving into this year’s mob stories, I need to backtrack a bit. One of last year’s biggest Italian films was Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah, based on Roberto Saviano’s journalistic exposé of organized crime in the Naples area. Aside from the biblical allusion, “Gamorra” is the Neapolitan pronunciation of “Camorra,” the primary criminal organization operating in the Campania region. (“Mafia” refers specifically to organized crime in Sicily.) Now the Camorra wants to kill Roberto Saviano, who has a permanent police escort and must be very secretive about where he is staying. Gomorrahis a tough film to watch. Much of it focuses on teenagers – children, really – growing up in a poisonous and practically inescapable atmosphere.
Similarly, set in the 1990’s, Brave Men centers on Lucia, a single mother living in the Salento peninsula of the Puglia region, or the “heel” of the Italian “boot.” With easy access to the then-booming illegal arms trade in the Baltic States, mobsters on the Adriatic coast – primarily Albanian gangs, the southern Italian ‘Ndrangheta and the Pugliese Mafia – were up to their ears in illicit weapons, and they killed a lot of each other to prove it. Don’t believe press releases that describe this film as a blend of drama and romantic comedy. There is nothing funny about Lucia’s life or the brief escape she has from it. She gets only one night with her former childhood friend, Ignazio. He’s now a criminal prosecutor, who is still in love with the bright, sassy girl Lucia used to be. Sadly, that girl is long gone.
After Gomorrah and Brave Men I was curious to see what has been billed as a “hopeful” Mafia story. Amenta’s The Sicilian Girl is about the life of Rita Atria. Renamed Rita Mancuso in the film, she breaks the omertà code of silence and becomes a witness in a major criminal investigation, after her father and brother are killed in a Mafia war. At this point, her days are numbered. The film was recently purchased by Music Box Films and should appear in American theaters next Spring. Like Gamorra, it’s not for everyone, but it’s a real eye-opener for anyone who got hooked on “The Sopranos” and thinks mob stories are entertainment. Most interesting for me was the discussion following the film, when director Marco Amenta and actress Veronica D’Agostino, who portrays Rita in the film, sat down for an interview with Silvia Bizio, Artistic Director of “Cinema Italian Style.”
D’Agostino comes from Lampedusa, an Italian island located closer to Tunisia than to Sicily. Lampedusa has a long history of piracy, smuggling, and – more recently – a refugee crisis, due to the continual flow of immigrants hoping to enter Europe from Africa. Because of this, D’Agostino’s words were more credible than the typical actress’s “I loved this character,” lip service:
“Playing Rita affected me a lot, because she was a strong and at the same time sweet girl, and it made me see many things that I hope stay with me, like how important it is in life to be honest, and believe in truth and sincerity.”
Later, an audience member asked Amenta if he was in danger from the Mafia.
“I hope not,” he replied, “the difference between the Mafia and Camorra, which is in Naples – because you’ve probably heard what’s written about the author of Gomorrah – is… the history of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia; they are old, older than the Camorra, and so, as I said, now they are more… they kill very few now.”
While the audience had a hard time controlling their nervous laughter, at his response, Amenta explained that violence and threats draw attention to the Mafia, which prefers to continue doing business in secret… “so they accept a lot more than before, in the past. I mean, a lot more judges that arrest many of them, or even a journalist or a director that makes a movie.”
So, after sitting through hours of dialog in Italian, I remain perhaps too stereotypically American. After all, my favorite film in the bunch was Focaccia Blues, a sometimes silly but always pleasant visit to Altamura, a city in the Puglia region. Altamura has neither majestic mountains nor a view of the sea, but it can always boast that it has “the bread that killed McDonalds.”
Happy filmgoing and... buon appetito.