Women power at OPENS ROADS 2018: Marco Tullio Giordana's NOME DI DONNA and Francesco Patierno's DIVA!

Two of the eight films I've been able to view for this year's OPEN ROADS are decidedly feminist -- but in quite differing ways. One is a documentary about the famous Italian actress (still alive but not longer making movies), Valentina Cortese, the other a fictionalized account of the journey one single mother must make in bringing to justice the powerful workplace boss who has propositioned her and then made her work life miserable after she rejects his "proposal." Both are worth seeing, though the documentary is the stronger and more interesting work.

DIVA! is the over-used but still appropriate title for the film that gives us a very oddball yet fascinating and surprisingly intelligent and even sometimes moving account of the life and career of Ms Cortese, who began her film work in Italy, moved on to Britain and finally America, before returning to her homeland and Europe to continue performing in movies and legitimate theater.

The filmmaker is Francesco Patierno (shown below), who last year made a much-heralded documentary titled Naples '44, narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, and back in 2003 the well-received narrative film, Pater familias.

For whatever reason(s), though Cortese is still alive, only archival footage of her and from her movies is used here. When the Cortese character is "shown" us, she is portrayed by eight different actresses, each standing in for a specific time frame. You might think this would be confusing or simply too strange to work very well, and yet it really does. The actresses include some of Italy's best, and the words they speak -- which appear to come from Cortese's oww diaries, letters and reminiscences -- resonate and sparkle with acute intelligence and feeling. Cortese certainly had a way with words (really: what a command of language she has!) and hearing her words spoken so well, with such understanding and emotion, makes the documentary continuously alive and riveting.

The actresses include the likes of Isabella Ferrari (above), Anita Caprioli and Barbora Bobulova (below), each one quite different and yet seemingly a fine stand-in for the actress herself, as the bio-pic documentary skips back and forth in time, resonating more on an emotional plane than via any strict time line.

Intercut with these actresses speaking the words of Cortese are numerous clips of the star's film work, as well as archival photos of her younger days. (That's she in her heyday, below, and as an older actress, further below, and at bottom in one of her earliest films.)

We meet Cortese's various lovers, co-stars, directors and producers -- among them Dassin, Truffaut, Zeffirelli, Losey, Gilliam, Zanuck, Richard Basehart and many more -- as they get screen time (or at least verbal remembrances), in which Mr. Zanuck comes out worst of all. As the film rolls along, even as crazily back-and-forth in time as it goes, there's a character, a personality and a strength here that is genuinely surprising.

I have never seen another bio-pic-doc anything like this one, and I doubt I would recommend that other filmmakers try it this way. But Patierno has certainly achieved something unusual and memorable. When I think of Ms Cortese from now on, in addition to her many fine performances, this documentary is sure to come immediately to mind.

Diva! plays at Open Roads this coming Wednesday. June 6, at 8:30pm. Click here for further information and/or tickets.

Marco Tullio Giordana (shown below) has long been one of my favorite Italian filmmakers. His The Best of Youth still stands as an amazing movie achievement. He has been represented at Open Roads before, and his latest film, NOME DI DONNA could hardly seem more timely, dealing as it does with sexual harrasment of a woman by her powerful and wealthy employer. What's more, it is beautifully photographed and acted, and features a lovely supporting turn by Adrianna Asti (at left, two photos below), as one of the residents in home for the elderly into which our heroine, at the film's beginning, is hired to work.

That character, Nina, is single mom with a young daughter and a genuinely caring and thoughtful boyfriend (who in not that daughter's dad) in tow. Nina is played by Cristiana Capotondi (shown below, right and further below), an actress whom I've enjoyed since first encountering her in the wonderful Italian film, Kryptonite! (click and scroll down). She is very good in this role, as well.

As directed and co-written (with Cristiana Mainardi) by Signore Giordana, Nome di donna proceeds quickly and smartly along its designated path, with never any doubt about the kindness, strength and overall quality of heroine, which Ms Capotondi brings to fine life.

Nor is there any doubt about the incident of sexual abuse that sparks the action of all that happens for the rest of the movie. It is also more than clear that the abuser has practiced this on more women in his employ than merely Nina.

The movie is particularly good at showing us the ins and outs of the Italian justice system, workers' unions, and how the workers at this home for the wealthy elderly, when their employment is threatened by the one woman who stands up for herself, will band together against this woman and allow the sexual abuse to continue. It also shows us, via Nina's daughter and what she "learns" at school, how immigrants are so easily demonized in Italy (as they are elsewhere throughout Europe) these days.

So how to fight all this? While Giordana, his cast and crew deliver the goods, all right, and his film is consistently interesting as it moves along its charted course, everything begins to look a little too easy -- almost pre-ordained. "I don't want to brag, but I've won every case," her lawyer (Michela Cescon, below) tells Nina. One wonders, what with the Italian courts so noted historically for their rather lax understanding of justice where the powerful are concerned, how all this can work itself out so easily. Well, maybe Italian courts are changing these days? God knows, American courts certainly are -- for the worse.

In any case, once the movie reaches its conclusion, you can feel free to bask in good feelings. Whether or not you'll be able to believe it all is another matter. I wonder if even Giordana actually believes it. The film's final nasty joke involving a newscaster, together with the ironic song played on the soundtrack, indicates that, for all the feel-good going on here, there remains an awfully long way to go toward gender equality.

Worth seeing, Nome di donna screens at Open Roads today, Saturday, June 2, at 3:30pm (with a Q&A with the director following the screening) and again Tuesday, June 5, at 4:30pm. To see the entire Open Roads schedule, click the link preceding. And to see TrustMovies' earlier posts on this year's series, click here, here and here.

OPEN ROADS 2018: Crime, the Church and the Mafia in the D'Innocenzo brothers' BOYS CRY and Vincenzo Marra's EQUILIBRIUM

One subject the FSLC annual series, OPEN ROADS, usually includes in its round-up of new Italian films is -- hello -- the Mafia in one ugly iteration or another. This year includes at least two such films (of those I've been able to view). Both are interesting and relatively well-executed, but the more-so of the two proves to be the one that takes the quieter, less-traveled and less-overtly-violent-while-being-even-more awful-to-contemplate route.

In EQUILIBRIUM (L'equilibrio), written and directed by Vincenzo Marra, the first thing we see is the famous Warner Brothers logo (the studio clearly had something to do with funding and/or distribution), which leads you to wonder why Warners never makes American movies that are this timely or important. The film shows us -- slowly, simply, shockingly via life in an Italian suburb -- the intersection of crime, environmental contamination, government failure and The Catholic Church.

This quartet of horrors, in which the Church proves the most horrible, has reduced the populace to near-literal slavery and many, many deaths. When a handsome, middle-aged priest (newcomer Mimmo Borrelli, above), trying to avoid a would-be romantic entanglement, requests a transfer from Rome back to his home-town parrish, he is suddenly confronted by all of this -- which understandably takes him some time to comprehend. (Why is the church school's playground closed off to the children so that a pet goat can stay there?)

Our hero, for that is certainly what he is, begins trying to change things. But how does one man, even if he is a priest, go up against this combination of powers? ("That collar," notes one of the crime gang, "is the only only thing keeping you alive, Father.") Filmmaker Marra does a quietly powerful job of making all this seem as believable as it is disgusting, and our priest's (as well as the viewer's) increasing shock at the deep involvement of the Church in abetting and covering up the crime lords' environmental pollution, drug sales, and sex abuse, makes it ever more difficult for him to do the job he believes he must do.

It won't take much pushing to see Equilibrium as a look at where the USA itself is heading under the current control of Republicans and the Trump administration. The only thing missing here is the criminal/Mafia element. But with this administration, Congress and our devolving court system, the criminal element is already built in. And so far as the Catholic Church is concerned, simply replace this priest with a member of a Christian fundamentalist church who just wants that church to get back to the real teachings of Jesus instead of preaching bigotry and hatred, and you'd have a nifty American version.

Meanwhile, Equilibrium, in Italian with English subtitles and running just 90 minutes, will play Open Roads this Sunday, June 3, at 1pm (there will be a Q&A with Vincenzo Marra, shown above, right, following the screening) and Wednesday, June 6, at 4:30pm. Click here for more information and/or tickets.

A new, young Italian filmmaking team of brothers, Damiano D'Innocenzo and Fabio D'Innocenzo, are at the helm, as writers and directors, of BOYS CRY (La terra dell'abbastanza), another gangland-driven drama included in Open Roads. Although flashier, cinematically darker, and considerably more violent and bloody than Equilibrium, TrustMovies found the brothers' movie a little too been there/done that to qualify as anything exactly "new." Still, in terms of pitch dark movies about family, friendship, betrayal, stupidity and greed, this one has got to rank pretty high.

The D'Innocenzo brothers (shown above) have contrived a tale of two "best friends"-- Mirko (newcomer Matteo Olivetti, below, right) and Manolo (Andrea Carpenzano, below, left) who, in terms of honesty, decency and anything approaching actual friendship, have a lot to learn. Instead, thanks to Manolo's dumb dad, the pair becomes involved with the local gang and is soon acting as its go-to hit men.

Everything about the movie seems a tad too "manufactured" in order to demonstrate its themes of betrayal and greed. From the opening car accident to the identity of its victim to the gangland connection right on through to the final, full-circle irony -- which is far too pat to be taken seriously -- everything clicks so nicely into place that the rub-your-face-in-the-dirt reality the brothers so seem to want comes at the expense of some believability.

The look of the film is spectacularly cruddy, intentionally so, I've no doubt. With gangland films set in Sicily, we can usually look forward to some beautiful location cinematography. What you get here is ugly-and-then-some. Performances are as fine all around as they're allowed to be, with barely a chance given to any character except maybe Mirko's mom (Milena Mancini, above) to behave in any way other than badly.

Still, the charisma of the two leads, coupled to their characters' unrelieved stupidity, may rope in the younger set, while providing more mature audiences with yet another chance to ponder raw youth at its least appetizing.

In Italian with English subtitles and running 95 minutes, Boys Cry screens at Open Roads on Sunday, June 3, at 3:30 pm (after which there will be a Q&A with the D'Innocenzo brothers) and Tuesday June 5 at 2:30 pm. Click here to view the entire Open Roads series, and here and here to see my earlier posts on this year's films.

At the FSLC, OPEN ROADS returns with a bevy of new Italian films. First up: Ferzan Ozpetek and the Taviani brothers

Mark your calendars for May 31 through June 6, as the popular series, OPEN ROADS: NEW ITALIAN CINEMA, now in its 18th year, returns to the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Co-presented by the FSLC and Istituto Luce Cinecittà, this year's series offers 15 new Italian films --narrative or documentary, plus a pair of " classics" that perfectly complement two of the new films to be seen: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Night of the Shooting Stars (above) will be shown in conjunction with the appearance of the brothers final film (Vittorio died this past April), Rainbow: A Private Affair, while Marco Ferreri's famous The Ape Woman will screen alongside a new documentary (below) about this iconoclast filmmaker, Marco Ferreri: Dangerous but Necessary.

In past years TrustMovies has often viewed all (or almost all) of the Open Roads films, but this year, due to age, infirmities and screening links that don't always work, he has only managed to see a half dozen of the selections. Still, these were enough to make the series, as always, a "must." Below are his thoughts on the first two films. More will come over the days to follow. You can view the entire Opens Roads schedule by clicking here and then clicking on the individual films for more information and/or on the particular screening time in order to procure tickets.

Ferzan Ozpetek is one of my favorite filmmakers, with a resume full of fine films, most of which deal with subjects and themes close to my own mind and heart -- from the intersection of art and life to sexuality, passion and love (often GLBT-related) -- so the opportunity to see anything new from this fellow is not to be missed. His latest, NAPLES IN VEILS (Napoli velata), seems to me a kind of culmination of all that's important to Signore Ozpetek, brought to life with the kind of beauty, passion and art that seems near-extraordinary, even for the likes of him. (The filmmaker is shown below, center, with the two gorgeous stars of his new film: Giovanna Mezzogiorno (right) and Alessandro Borghi (left).

Ozpetek's movies are usually eye-poppingly beautiful to view, and Naples in Veils is no exception -- except that it is exceptionally so. The director and his cinematographer (Gian Filippo Corticelli) give us the architecture (exterior, interior), the sea, the penthouses, basements, highways and byways of Naples as we've never seen them. The movie is such a visual treat, in fact, that if it were merely a travelog, I'd probably have been thrilled.

Yet the tale it tells is even more unusual. As written by Ozpetek, along with Gianni Romoli and Valia Santella, Naples in Veils begins with the murder of a husband by his wife, with their young daughter a witness to the result. We move to that daughter, now grown into Ms Mezzogiorno, attending a very bizarre "Nativity Scene as performance art" (above). At this event, staged, I believe, in the very apartment in which that murder took place, our heroine meets a young man (Signore Borghi) and is soon trysting in the hottest sex scene Ozpetek has yet filmed. Our couple spends a passionate (and quite versatile) night together night and arranges to meet the following day at the museum.

From there, the movie turns into a major mystery -- not simply of what, why and how something awful has happened but even more about the mysteries of character, identity, and the why and how of who we come to love. It seems to me that all of Ozpetek's major concerns are mirrored here: passionate love vs the stable, caring variety; the place and meaning of art to our lives; and even the very act of storytelling itself (the filmmaker borrows a page out of Paul Haggis' wondrous Third Person). And all of this is given to us wrapped in the most spectacularly beautiful packaging.

I'd try to stop myself from overpraising this film, but I don't think that is even possible. Yes, Naples in Veils is all over the place, yet every place it ventures is worth the trip. The movie -- in Italian with English subtitles and running 113 minutes -- screens at Open Roads  this Saturday June 2 at 8:30pm, and next Thursday, June 7, at 2:30 pm. Click here for more information and tickets.

It always sad to reach the end of a filmmaking career, particularly when that career has encompassed so many interesting and worthwhile films (and not just the usual suspects: The Night of the Shooting Stars and Padre Padrone) such as Allonsanfan, Good Morning Babylon and especially the more recent Caesar Must Die. With the death this past April of Vittorio Taviani, pictured below, right, with his brother Paolo, the duo's final film is now upon us.

I only wish RAINBOW: A PRIVATE AFFAIR had proven a better good-bye. God knows, the movie is lovely to look at, with crack cinematography by Simone Zampagni and sets and costumes so redolent of the movie's time frame (World War II Italy). Trouble is, these lustrous and nostalgic visuals (as below) call so much attention to themselves, they often overwhelm the movie's story, told in very fractured fashion by the filmmakers, who themselves adapted to the screen the novel by Beppe Fenoglio about Italian partisans in WWII.

The story has to do with a young partisan, played by the usually excellent Luca Marinelli (at right, below and at bottom), who, here, seem mostly in some sort of daze, on the run from Mussolini's Black Shirts, as he keeps flashing back to various memories of a love triangle between himself, his best friend Giorgio (Lorenzo Richelmy of Netflix's Marco Polo, dancing above, right) and their would-be girlfriend Fulvia (played by Valentina Bellè, above, left, and at bottom, center).

Simultaneously, our sort-of hero travels through the mist and over hill and valley -- first looking for Giorgio, and then after the latter has been captured by the Black Shirts, trying to find and capture a Black Shirt to trade for Giorgio's release. On some level the plot here makes little sense realistically, but the Tavianis seem to have imagined it to be a kind of fantasy anyway, so perhaps that doesn't matter much. The past, in all its pristine beauty, resonates most. The present, in all its degradation, violence and torture, registers as more of a dream.

If so, it's a dream that isn't nearly as strong as it might be. I am glad to have seen the film, but it will not remain in my memory as one of the brothers' best. Rainbow: A Private Affair (dumb title. the addition of "Rainbow" to the original Italian title is just silly, even if the song Over the Rainbow figures as part of the nostalgic past), in Italian with English subtitles and running 84 minutes, screens twice at Opens Roads: Friday, June 1, at 2pm and Monday, June 4, at 6:30pm. Click here for more info or to purchase tickets.

There'll be more to come on Open Roads over the following few days.
Stay tuned...