The search for English subtitles led me to one from 2010 with a couple of my favorite actors, Giuseppe Battiston and Silvio Orlando, La Passione, directed by Carlo Mazzacurati. Battiston won the David di Donatello award and the Nastro D’Argento for best supporting actor in this movie and Mazzacurati was nominated at Venice for the Golden Lion Award, but the critics didn’t go wild over it. It’s quiet; funny but not raucously so, contemplative and subtle. If you are looking for a movie with a punch, this isn’t it. But if you want one that you’ll think about for a while, it is.
Silvio Orlando plays Gianni Dubois, a movie director who has hit a dry spell – he hasn’t made a film in 5 years and he’s starting to get a lot of pressure to do one. He’s got a big important meeting scheduled that “his life depends on”, when he gets a call from Toscana about a problem at a vacation property that he owns.
He rushes up to check on it and finds a house full of plumbers and the police; he’s been neglecting the place and the plumbing is leaking over to his neighbor’s place. His neighbor is a church and the water is damaging a 15th century fresco, so everybody’s a little annoyed with him.
The mayor of the town, played by Stefania Sandrelli ( an older actress with a long and formidable career who played the mother in L’ultimo Bacio – and she looks GREAT) proposes a solution to his, now, legal problem. He can direct the town’s religious pageant – the Passion – or they’ll report him to the Minister of Culture and ruin his reputation as an artist. I know, I know, it’s far-fetched. Would this really ruin him? Can a mayor even do that? Who knows and who cares? It’s a comedy.
Dubois reluctantly accepts and has five days to put something together. He gets lucky, and runs into Ramiro (Battiston) a guy that he directed when he was doing some work with prisoners and who credits him (and God) with changing his life. Does he want to be Dubois’ assistant director? He sure does!
As the town bands together to form an unlikely theater troupe and as problems arise, anything slick and showy that the mayor has envisioned gets abandoned and they all kind of discover “the true meaning of Easter”, saving the day with “the least of the brethren” and giving a little new life to everybody. There are no big tranformation for Dubois or the town, they all have to find something within themselves to make this work – something that they probably didn’t even know they possessed.
Getting off track for just a second, the director, Mazzacurati also directed a movie that I’ve been meaning to write about, L’amore Ritrovata, or as it’s been translated, An Italian Romance – available right now on Time Warner International On-Demand. That one stars Stefano Accorsi (L’Ultimo Bacio ) and Maya Sansa (Buongiorno Notte) and I saw it when I was in Florence years ago – I just didn’t like it very much and haven’t felt like talking about it – but it’s on TV. And it’s got Accorsi! And I have a feeling that it’s better than I’m giving it credit for.
Back to La Passione – You’ll need a region free or European DVD player for this one, but it’s got the English subtitles.
I Love Italian Everything 