Toni Servillo in Francesco Amato's screwball comedy from Italy, LET YOURSELF GO

After viewing that great Italian actor Toni Servillo in everything from the fine films of Paolo Sorrentino to the delightful and/or ruminative political/economic satires of Roberto Andò to the pitch-black family comedy It Was the Son and so many more wonderful movies, it may come as a particularly bright surprise to see him in what can best be described as an Italian screwball comedy.

In Francesco Amato's new film, LET YOURSELF GO (Lasciati andari), Signore Servillo plays an up-tight Jewish psychiatrist who is saddled with at least as many problems as the fairly woeful clients whom he (sort of) treats. Of course, our shrink is able to hide his problems better.

The film's co-writer (with Francesco Bruni and Davide Lantieri) and director, Signore Amato (pictured at right), has created something we don't see all that much of these days, particularly featuring an actor in the lead role as fine and full-fledged-serious as Servillo.

That would be the screwball comedy -- something so goofy and ridiculous that you certainly can't take it seriously yet conceived and executed so well that you can't help but be royally entertained.

And when TrustMovies calls Servillo's character (shown above, center) a Jewish psychiatrist, don't go to this movie expecting anything in which religion plays much of a part (Catholicism is almost as important here as Judaism). Fortunately, more than anything else, the film is a very human and humane comedy. You end up rooting for just about every character in it. And since a couple of them are escaped felons and another in a con artist/scammer, this is something of an accomplishment for Amato, his cast and crew.

The movie begins with a very screwy-looking fellow (the scary/funny Luca Marinelli, above, right), having just buried something in the ground, trying his best to count off the paces from where his "loot" now resides. Clearly he is mathematically, maybe mentally, challenged. But he's oddly amusing, even so. We won't return to him again until perhaps the movie's final forty minutes. But when we do, the remainder of the "plot" suddenly begins falling into place, and the film grows more bizarre and hilarious right up into and including the end credits (which you really must sit thru to reap the full comedic benefits).

Along its meandering but wise and witty way, Let Yourself Go makes smart fun of everything from psychotherapy (above) to physical fitness (below), synagogues and Communion. To try to describe the plot would only give away too much and probably ruin some fun in the process.

Best to just mention how very good is the Spanish actress Verónica Echegui (at right, above and below, of My Prison Yard and Bunny and the Bull) as the young exercise trainer who gives our shrink his new lease on life.  Ms Echegui has been doing lovely work for fifteen years now. She does not seem to age much and just grows more charming and versatile with each new role.

As for Servillo, the actor proves he can handle a mainstream comedy as easily and well as he does those various "art" films. He knows how to simply be quiet, alert and on-the-mark and thus manages to pull in every bit of humor he (and his movie) needs. As the "straight" man around whom the satellite of comic performers revolve, he asks for neither laughs nor sympathy yet somehow gets both. What an actor this guy is!

A non-stop delight that grow better, funnier and crazier as it moves long, Let Yourself Go -- from Menemsha Films and running 112 minutes -- opens here in South Florida this coming Friday, March 2 in the Miami area at the AMC Aventura, in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters and the Regal Shadowood, in Fort Lauderdale at the Savor Cinema, in Hollywood at the Cinema Paradiso, in Tamarac at The Last Picture Show and at the Movies of Del Ray and Lake Worth.

Huppert & Poelvoorde score in Fontaine's latest delight, MY WORST NIGHTMARE

As much as I admire much of the world of French filmmaker Anne Fontaine, I am not sure I'd have believed you had you told me her latest offering would be a kind of feel-good, screwball comedy about class barriers that, in addition, would turn Isabelle Huppert into an actress seemingly born to make us laugh. No, I wouldn't have believed you. But please believe me: It's all true.

Though a number of Ms Fontaine's films (The Girl from Monaco, Coco Before Chanel) involve excursions into class differences (the director is shown at right), one of her earliest -- Dry Cleaning -- took on the attempted melding of the bourgeoisie with lower-class "artists" that proved sensual, scary and memorable. In her latest, she does it again, this time melding an haut bourgeois couple with an even lower-class jack-of-all-trades (this would be a career-defining performance by Belgian actor Benoît Poelvoorde, below, except that just about every performance this guy gives would qualify as such) and the result is as funny and frolicsome as Dry Cleaning was dark and dirty.

MY WORST NIGHTMARE is often silly and obvious but it is almost always remarkably entertaining, thanks to the smart screenplay and dialog (by Ms Fontaine and Nicolas Mercier) that keeps the initially somewhat unbelievable situation just off-kilter enough to work. Couple this to performances that do exactly the same thing (they keep surprising us and stringing us along) and you have a not-too-slick but pleasantly fast-paced almost-farce.

Along with Poelvoorde and Ms Huppert -- (above) who does her ice queen thing to a fare-thee-well before melting ever-so-slightly but quite believably as she learns to experience a new side of life -- the cast includes the ever-game, André Dussollier (below with Huppert, and recently seen in Téchiné's Unforgivable), who appears to be having the time of his life making this movie. His surprise and enjoyment are quite contagious.

The fourth wheel on this swift and svelte little contraption is an actress new to me named Virginie Efira, shown at far left, who plays the necessarily bureaucratic but kindly social worker (with quite a thing for nature and trees) who becomes involved in this little menage. Ms Efira manages to be pert and beautiful, while also appearing to possess a good deal of intelligence and originality -- an arresting combination, I must say.

Also on board are two young near-teenagers, one belonging to Huppert & Dussollier (Donatien Suner, at left, above), the other to Poelvoorde (newcomer Corentin Devroey, above, right), and their characters and situation are handled with enough care, compassion and sense to give the movie an extra lift.

The film looks good but also looks as though it was shot on video, perhaps for speed and, well, cost, of course. In any case, the whole thing adds up nicely, and while every one of the actors is working at full capacity, it is Mr. Poelvoorde's performance that makes this a don't-miss movie.

My Worst Nightmare, from Strand Releasing and running a fleet 99 minutes, opens this Friday in New York City at the Quad Cinema and on Friday, November 9, in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Monica 4-Plex and Playhouse 7.

Hey, Laemmle: Why won't the site for your Monica 4-Plex ever turn up for me? I can access the remainder of your theaters just fine, but not this one, and not for some weeks now....