Cinema Italian Style

SIFF Cinema’s sixth annual Cinema Italian Style mini-film festival stakes its claim at the SIFF Cinema Uptown for the next week, bringing with it a generous serving of the best in (mostly) current Italian-language cinema. Things kick off tonight with a screening of Francesco Bruni’s family dramedy Noi 4 at 7 p.m., followed by an Opening Night Party in the Sorrento Hotel’s Fireside Room.

From there, Cinema Italian Style 2014 zips through a repertoire offering something for nearly every mood, but read on below to find out which movies we’re most excited about.

The Scrappy Caper Comedy: In I Can Quit Whenever I Want, neurobiology fellow Pietro (Eduardo Leo) has his job yanked out from under him by his university’s budget cuts. His innovative solution? Gathering several of his equally-cash-strapped academic buddies together to design and distribute an ecstasy-esque drug with just enough chemical variations to not wind up on Italy’s banned substance list. Yeah, it’s Breaking Bad meets Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, with a pinch of Ocean’s Eleven's caper shenanigans stirred in, but I Can Quit definitely shapes up as its own animal. Rookie director Sydney Sibilia keeps the pace lively, the chemistry between his unlikely criminal gang couldn’t be sharper, and the gags and humor play famously despite the language barrier.

The Archival Gems: Cinema Italian Style always serves up at least one phenomenal archival film presentation, and the 2014 iteration offers two doozies. The Istituto Luce, home of the cultural treasure trove that is the Luce Archives, has celebrated its 90th anniversary by commissioning 9X10 Novanta, an experimental feature in which nine young directors each plumb the depths of the Luce’s vaults to construct an original ten-minute short out of archival footage.

Meanwhile, anyone a little nonplussed by last year’s Cinema Italian Style screening of Bernardo Bertolucci’s interesting but erratic new film Me and You should find their faith restored by a revival of The Conformist, the legendary auteur’s 1971 neo-noir about a weak-willed fascist (Jean-Louis Trintignant) tasked with assassinating his former college mentor. Last Tango in Paris and The Last Emperor remain more well-known, but The Conformist just might be Bertolucci’s masterpiece, a richly visual movie with latent homoerotic and philosophical heft just beneath its sumptuously-rendered surface.

The Promising Directorial Debut: Pierfrancesco Diliberto (better known as Pif) is a TV and radio host in Italy, and his first feature The Mafia Kills Only in Summer pegs him as a talent to watch. His debut provides an often-funny and unexpectedly moving satire of one young man’s life navigating the mob-violence-ridden environment of 1970s Palermo. Diliberto blends vintage television footage with his own new work to create a flawed but ambitious and really involving whole that straddles the line between harrowing drama and laughter elegantly.

The Slice of Life Documentary: It’s difficult to gauge the overall quality of Italy in a Day, which follows a single day across the country through raw footage captured by several natives. But as a glimpse into the existence of modern-day Italians across social and economic strata, it’s sure to be fascinating.

The Oscar Bait: Human Capital represents Italy’s official submission for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and it’s got an awful lot going for it. The Chinese puzzle of a script ably reconfigures Stephen Amidon’s Connecticut-set novel to Northern Italy, director Paolo Virzi engineers tension like a champ, and the cast (including familiar Italian names like Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Fabrizio Gifuni) delivers uniformly solid work. The setup may feel a little close to Paul Haggis’s Crash for comfort, but Virzi throws more than enough curveballs to keep things interesting, and the portrayal of Italy’s class division rings true without feeling heavy-handed.

Source: cityartsonline.com