Dir.
Paolo Sorrentino, 2006, Italy, 99 mins, Subtitles
Cast: Giacomo Rizzo, Laura Chiatti, Clara Bindi
by Hemanth Kissoon
“Mother, nuns don't steal,” Geremia
De Geremei (Rizzo).
“Everyone steals. And everyone's unhappy. Everyone.” Mother
(Bindi).
Both The Consequences of Love and The Family Friend, the
latest two from writer-director Sorrentino, share a melancholy
that pervades all characters, victims as well as predators.
The edge is taken off the nihilism by the dream of escape.
Sorrentino presents reasons for the misery without appearing
trite, giving glimpses of pasts and motivations that allow
an audience to fill out these intriguing characters. A stockbroker
inadvertently loses the mafia billions of dollars and is
punished by being forced to stay in a hotel for eight years
laundering money. There is no Oldboy-style catharsis (physical
or emotional) through vengeance, but release through love/lust.
Here, the protagonist is not a good man, though he thinks
he is. Geremia is a loan-shark who lends at huge interest
rates to his poor local community when their salaries cannot
meet exceptional circumstances (fertility treatment, a wedding,
etc).
“You were given the world on loan. I lend the world
to you when you happen to lose it,” says Geremia.
Sorrentino and his director of photography (Luca Bigazzi,
who also did Romanzo Criminale) clearly have a great eye
for composition, colour and movement. The beautiful, claustrophobic
artistry is stepped up another level. The opening shot of
a nun buried up to her head at a beach leads to a series
of non sequiturs: a man wearing a paper crown, a coach nearly
running over a woman, a cowboy moodily watching a horse and
a women's volley-ball match; that together confuse, force
you to concentrate, and hint at what is to come.
While the visuals are an improvement
on his already striking previous film, the storytelling
is murkier. The film crams in so many snippets to set-up
proceedings it is almost painful to engage. It does not
help that the subtitles rattle along at machine-gun pace
along with the quickly changing scenes. If you are a fluent
Italian speaker then I can imagine this is a treat for
the senses in the same way that Howard Hawks' His Girl
Friday's rapid-fire banter is to English speakers. If you
are not, then having the ability to rewind and pause will
add to the enjoyment as you can take in this densely packed
film. There is a continuation of the filmmaker's apparent
interest in parenthood, lust and theft, and now adding friendship
to the mix. Friendship is not the Hollywood hold your bullet-ridden
best mate while exchanging quips à la Lethal Weapon
2, instead Neil LaBute-like misanthropy.
“When you kill someone you die with them,” Geremia.
The film follows Geremia, an old man who is described at
one point as a physical grotesque. He scuttles around with
his arm permanently in a sling, lending money to those who
pay dearly for it, behaves as an unashamed cheap-skate, sleazing
over women, and looking after his bed-ridden over-bearing
mother. He is a seeming cross-between Norman Bates, Dr Crab
from Memoirs of a Geisha and Shylock. He kills metaphorically
by robbing his customers of dignity which hollows them out.
“Your naivety is touching. But nothing is right in
this life,” Geremia
It is an ambiguous film, which exasperates and intrigues
because you cannot quite get a handle on it. It is perhaps
at one level a morality tale about injustice and greed, but
on another paints in shades of grey showing that even a monster,
portrayed physically so, can be understood, and maybe through
understanding perhaps comes empathy? The film does not quite
satisfy but certainly stays with you.
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