Last night I was at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater for the first two films of the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series. There was standing room only and applause for both Paolo Virzì’s Tutti i Santi Giorni and Marco Bellocchio’s Bella Addormentata. When I ran into Bellocchio, director Daniele Ciprì, and actor Luca Marinelli from Tutti i Santi Giorni outside the theater I couldn’t help myself, I had to say hello. (Sorry, guys. I was just excited to see you all.) When I told Marinelli that I had already watched Tutti i Santi Giorni twice he looked at me like I was crazy and said, “And you’re here to see it again?”
“Yes!”, I laughed, and he asked me why. I said, and you all probably know already how I answered that question, “Because I love Italian movies!” Seeing his film, Tutti i Santi Giorni, for the third time and with Marinelli in the audience I was able to focus on his truly sweet performance as the tender young Guido who loves Antonia without conditions or ego.
READ MY REVIEW OF TUTTI I SANTI GIORNI
I asked him a question that I ask all the time on this blog, and I never get the answer I’m looking for; I must not be phrasing it right. “Why, in a country so full of good-looking young people, does Italy do so few romantic comedies with good-looking young people, like Tutti i Santi Giorni?’ It seems to me that most of the Italian rom-coms are the stories of middle-aged couples. Why don’t they follow the Americans and the French lead and use their abundant natural resource of beautiful young actors and make a bunch of romantic tear-jerkers? That’s what I’d do if I were an Italian filmmaker.
But of course I am not an Italian filmmaker, and I’m not even Italian, so maybe I’ll never understand the differences in what Americans and Italians look for in comedies and in romantic stories. Everybody on stage and in the audience laughed as Marinelli shrugged, “Who knows?” in response to my question, but after the Q&A he came over to me and tried to explain it further.
As he spoke about what they were trying to do in Tutti i Santi Giorni, making more than just a rom-com and more about the depth of love, I realized that we were speaking different languages, and not just Italian vs English. Italians do want something different in a rom-com. They want to say something about love that is way beyond what Hollywood usually does. If an Italian rom-com is funny, it’s because life can be funny; it’s not funny in a jokey way. Love supercedes the jokes in Italian movies, not the other way around like in American ones.
All I know is that we could all use some more rom-coms of any kind with Luca Marinelli; he is gorgeous and he’s a gifted actor. He was a Shooting Star in 2013, the Berlinale’s recognition of Europe’s best young actors.
Tonight I’ll be at Daniele Ciprì’s ‘È Stato Il Figlio’, my favorite movie at last year’s Venice Film Festival.
I Love Italian Everything 