I Love Italian Everything

If you’ve got Time Warner Cable, take advantage of another Italian film that they are now offering On Demand – Riprendimi.

I didn’t like the name – Riprendimi – at first. In fact, I want the job of coming up with English names for Italian movies; for instance, somebody decided to rename this 2008 movie starring Alba Rohrwacher, Good morning heartache. I would have stuck with a more literal translation – Take me back. But when Lucia, played by Rohrwacher, explains that her life feels like the song, “Good Morning Heartache” – it makes sense. Even when she’s left alone, she wakes up every morning with a companion that refuses to leave her.

Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, it’s the story of an asshole who gets bored with his wife, baby, and responsibilities and decides he needs “a new life” (translation: he wants to screw other women.) Sorry for the hostility; I’m looking at this with the eyes of a woman who has lived too long and seen too much of this kind of thing. Who do these guys think they are anyway? Poor babies – not having fun anymore? Well, your wife is going to have lots of fun now, raising your child by herself.

OK, I got that out of my system.

The twist in this sad but all too real story of a bored husband, Giovanni, played by Marco Foschi, is that the husband is an actor who has decided to let his filmmaker buddies make a documentary of his life, and all this drama is being filmed. I’d have thought it unrealistic, the wife, Lucia,  letting them continue even when her husband has moved out, and even after his mistress comes over to introduce herself, but in this age of reality TV, nothing surprises me. The documentary filmmakers want to show what is happening in a society in which everybody’s a “temp”, and nobody can find permanence and stability in a real job, but they got more than they bargained for.

As a sort of running narration through the film, the documentary filmmakers talk about what they are witnessing, very naturally bringing their own experiences, thoughts, and fears into the action. They’re committed to finishing the project, they’ve sublet their apartments and invested every dime they have in it, but their doubts and personal feelings are making them uncomfortable.

Watching Lucia try to work it all out seems very real and bitterly authentic. In the end, it’s a little too tidily wrapped up, but not so unbelievable. Riprendimi is surprisingly good. I was surprised, because I was expecting just another silly reality TV story that takes the easy way out and by manipulating emotions and letting us see things we couldn’t with any other device. But it isn’t like that. This is just a good story about a story that happens to have been “caught on film”. And the acting is really good. Rohwacher is a keeper.

You’ll need a region free DVD player in the US for this film, so catch it on Time Warner On Demand while you can.