Film Reviews INTERVIEW
SEX AND GRIEF Legendary Italian actor and filmmaker Nanni Moretti talks about his new role as a grieving TV executive
‘I went to a public reading of the novel Quiet Chaos by the author Sandro Veronesi who I have known for years. Outside the bookshop I happened to bump into a woman from the production company, who told me that they had already bought the rights to turn the book into a film. I told her straight away that I’d be very interested in playing the lead role of Pietro Paladini. When Sandro rang me up the next day, saying it would be a pleasure to work together, I realised I couldn’t go back on my word. ‘Right from the beginning, when I was reading the book, I was
intrigued by the idea of playing Pietro, but I never thought that this was a film I would direct. I think what interested me, both as an actor and as a person, is that story explores the possibility of a man who puts his life on hold after a tragedy, and who steps back and reorders the different elements in his existence.
Quiet Chaos shows a very different way of going through the
mourning process than my earlier film The Son’s Room. In a sense you feel that Pietro is waiting for some sort of expression of grief to arrive upon him and upon his 10-year-old daughter Claudia (Blu Yoshimi). The film is a series of duets between Pietro and the various people in his life.
The sex scene in the film, between my character and Eleonara (Isabella Ferrari), has caused a hysterical reaction in Italy. Apparently I shouldn’t be acting in such a scene. To me it’s a case of projection — people project onto somebody else their own problems. Roughly the same thing happened with The Caiman. Journalists wrote sensational articles about the film before they had actually seen it, and there was this absurd debate about something I hadn’t made. I didn’t think it was possible for the Italian press to get any worse but I think they have.’ (Interview by Tom Dawson) ■ Quiet Chaos plays GFT, Glasgow and Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 28 Nov—Thu 4 Dec. See review, page 45.
44 THE LIST 27 Nov–11 Dec 2008
THRILLER RIVALS (LES LIENS DU SANG) (15) 107min ●●●●● Based on the autobiographical book by Michel and Bruno Papet Deux Frères – Flic & Truand, Rivals is the story of two brothers in late 1970s Lyon, one a cop, the other a criminal. When the impressively moustachioed Gabriel (François Cluzet from Tell No One) is released from jail after a ten year stretch, the former pimp is still adored by his ailing father, much to the irritation of his younger police inspector sibling Francois (Guillaume Canet). The latter, however, is risking underworld retribution by seeing the beautiful wife Corinne (Clotilde Hesme) of a violent man he put behind bars.
Despite its opening car chase and its deadly dénouement, Rivals is more of a character study than a dynamic thriller. It’s little surprise that Gabriel soon slips back into his old haunts and habits, or that Michel faces a conflict of interest between his professional duties and his fraternal obligations. Filming in widescreen, writer-director Jacques Maillot knits together a familiar period aesthetic. Yet, in this traditionally masculine universe, there’s also space for several female roles: notably Gabriel’s hard-bitten ex-wife Monique (Carole Franck) and his innocent supermarket colleague (Marie Denarnaud). And there are fine performances from Cluzet and Canet, who convey the powerfully ambivalent relationship between their two characters, both of whom are desperately seeking, through their respective actions, to escape their traumatic childhood experiences. (Tom Dawson) ■ Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 5 Dec; GFT, Glasgow from Fri 12 Dec.
DRAMA/ROMANCE ANO UNA (15) 78min ●●●●●
Inspired by Chris Marker’s 1962 short La Jetée, the young Mexican writer/director Jonás Cuarón (son of filmmaker Alfonso) has constructed a feature film that consists entirely of still images. Over the course of a year he photographed his friends and members of his family, before writing a fictional narrative about a platonic love story between a 14-year-old Mexican schoolboy Diego (Diego Catano) and a 20-something American student Molly (Eireann Harper). And to blur further the boundaries between ‘reality’ and fiction, Cuarón got the subjects of his photography rather than professional actors to record the dialogue of their characters.
Unfolding over four seasons, Año uña explores the tentative cross- cultural romance between its protagonists with charm and humour. Throughout Cuarón uses inner monologues to convey the gulf between how Molly and Diego appear to others and how they actually feel about themselves. Nor is this a film which avoids the darker aspects of peoples’ lives, as Diego’s grandfather is treated for throat cancer, and the skilful fusion of form and content leaves the viewer with a strong sense of time’s inevitable passing. (Tom Dawson) ■ Cameo, Edinburgh from Fri 28 Nov; GFT, Glasgow from Sat 27 Dec.
COMEDY/ANIMATION MADAGASCAR 2: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA (PG) 89min ●●●●●
When Alex the lion (voiced by Ben Stiller), Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Marty the zebra (Chris Rock) escaped from their Manhattan zoo in 2005 hit Madagascar, they were leaders of their animated pack. Despite a slew of imitators since, Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa shows why DreamWorks, like Pixar, have stayed ahead of their rivals. After a Lion King influenced flashback which sets up Alex’s father issues, this sequel from the original’s directors Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath puts the animal pals on a flight back to their zoo home, only to crash-land in Africa. The going-native theme is expanded, with good-time fascist lemur (Sacha Baron Cohen) getting the best lines and the penguins the best laughs; the real cleverness comes from recognising the riffs, from the ‘gremlin on the wing’ sequence from The Twilight Zone to the falling plane camaraderie of Almost Famous. Attempting to shoehorn in a few too many messages about individualism,
Madagascar 2’s volcanic resolution is, however, disappointingly conventional, but there’s unexpected poetry in the animals’ first view of Africa’s sweeping CGI- plains, with not only the theme from Born Free swelling up on the soundtrack, but a plaintive out-of-range message seeping from a mobile phone. And while only the early reprise of Reel to Reel’s ‘I Like To Move It’ truly recaptures the madcap spirit of the original, this sequel sets up Madagascar 3 as a welcome prospect. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 5 Dec.