Filippo Timi and Sebastiano Mauri's FAIRYTALE hits digital and DVD here in the USA

If you tend to be a sucker for very strange cinema (as am I), you probably won't find an odder example than FAIRYTALE (Favola), the Italian movie from 2017 based on the popular stage play by actor and sometimes writer Filippo Timi, one of my favorite performers, whom we get to see far too seldom here in the USA. TrustMovies interviewed Signore Timi back in 2010, when he played the role of Mussolini in Marco Bellocchio's Vincere. Versatile in the extreme, he sometimes proves nearly unrecognizable from movie to movie.

In the case of Fairytale, Timi (above, left) has co-written the screenplay (with the film's director, Sebastiano Mauri, above, right) as well as essaying the leading role of Mrs. Fairytale, an American housewife in the 1950s who is, pretty much unbeknownst (initially, even to herself), going through a process of heavy-duty self-discovery. On one level, this involves everything from mere temptation to adultery and murder, on yet another, it embraces cross-dressing, transgender, homosexuality, heterosexuality, pansexuality, depression and (societal-induced) mental illness.

As the film opens, our heroine (above) is flitting around her very 1950s home (as envisioned by Italians of the 21st Century), and all by themselves, the costumes, set and production design are reason enough to sit through this gloriously cockeyed movie. So is the tiny taxidermy-mounted poodle, Lady, who begins this bizarre concoction (in animated form) and then stays with us throughout, as some weird kind of security blanket for our thoroughly addled homemaker.

In addition to the eye-popping decor, we also get a dose of just about all your could ask from a film about America in the 50s: Doris Day, UFOs, straying husbands, unfaithful wives, the mambo and Douglas Sirk/Ross Hunter-inspired melodrama. As an encyclopedia of movie knowledge and references, we get quite a lot from Fairytale, too, including Mildred Pierce (below) and All About Eve (further below).

Timi is pretty much the whole show and he is, as always, exraordinary, but very good support is provided by Lucia Mascino (above and at bottom) as the next-door neighbor and friend who becomes quite a bit more over time,

and by Luca Santagostino (below, playing triplet brothers in this neighborhood with flair and versatility). And although daddy issues don't seem to raise their head in the course of the film,

mommy issues certainly do, via the funny, incisive performance of Piera Degli Esposti (below), in the role of Fairytale's rather commanding mother. As lunatic as the movie is, start to finish, it's also clearly trying to persuade audiences to think longer, harder and more pointedly about gender, the roles we assign to this, and the somewhat "iffy" results we continue to get.

While the USA, France and other western countries have all made their own mark on the subject, Fairytale seems to me the very peculiar Italian version of it all.

The fact the Signore Timi, whom I have found to be -- both on screen and in person -- among the "straightest," most "male" and powerful of actors and personalities has been, according to the IMDB, married to the film's director, Signore Mauri, for the past four years would seem to indicate that he has found his own gender-bending way to deal with all this. More power to him!

From Breaking Glass Pictures and running just 90 minutes, Fairytale makes its DVD and VOD debut this coming Tuesday, May 12 -- for purchase and/or rental. It's over-the-top and then some, but if you're looking for an escape from the world of our current and ever-present Covid-19 menace, this movie may very well get you the hell out of here. (It's even got an American flag for the "patriots" among us.)

Giuseppe Capotondi's European Film Award nominee THE DOUBLE HOUR opens

What is this new Italian film by first-timer Guiseppe Capotondi? It's a mystery, all right, but I use that word almost in its religious sense. Its stars are two of the Italy's most versatile, in-the-moment actors at work today: Filippo Timi (Musolini in last year's Vincere) and Ksenia Rappoport (The Unknown Woman), and my lord, do they shine, bouncing off each other brilliantly in THE DOUBLE HOUR (La doppia ora), an unusual combina-tion love story/mystery/heist movie/ghost tale that keeps rearran-ging itself as it goes along yet never loses our interest or belief.

As good as is the direction by Signore Capotondi, shown at left, who manages to keep us on-track (even when we're sure we're off it), a word must be said for the terrific screeplay by Alessandro Fabbri, Lucovica Rampoldi and Stefando Sardo, that so effortlessly combines what seems like a billion sub-genres without skipping a beat. it is also, in its dark, quiet manner, a visual feast. Because the movie is a mystery in more ways than one, the less said about plot, the better. But I will mention that it offers one of the oddest yet strangely satisfying conclusions in memory. It was also one of the best of the many good films in last year's FSLC Open Roads series.

Since TrustMovies won't talk about plot, he'll fill up his space with praise for the two lead actors: Timi (above) and Rappoport (below). The former, who has been extraordinary is every single role in which I've seen him (I do not exaggerate), beginning with Open My Heart in 2002 through In Memory of Me, Signorina Effe, Saturn in Opposition and As God Commands. Most American will have seen Timi in The American or perhaps Vincere. Few actors have the ability to bring us so close to themselves, to allow us to see deeply inside them, and Timi is one such. If you're a fan of his work or want to know more about him, you'll learn a little, at least, from my interview with the man a couple of years back.

As for Russian-born actress (who works a lot in Italy!) Ksenia Rappoport, I've only seen her in three other films: The Rider Named Death, The Unknown Woman and The Man Who Loves. But she has registered strongly in each, while appearing different enough to be almost unrecognizable. As does Timi, she possesses the ability to throw herself body and soul into a role (no wonder she won a peck of awards for The Unknown Woman: If you have not seen this film, do). Here, she proves the most mysterious part of the mystery at hand, and her graceful, fleet performance goes far toward bringing the movie home.

As do few serious films that also act as "entertainment," The Double Hour makes better people of its viewers by thoroughly wrapping us into the process at work here, while enabling us to wrestle with subjects such as immigration, employment and the "other"; love, trust and honor. When it's over, the characters we've spent time with have genuinely grown and changed -- while we've arrived at something rich and new from the experience. The film (95 minutes, in Italian with English subtitles), from Samuel Goldwyn Films, opens in New York this Friday, April 15, at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and Sunshine Cinema -- with a welcome national roll-out to follow.