Pappi Corsicato’s Il Volta Di Un’Altra

Where are you Pappi Corsicato? Have a little too much fun last night in New York City?

Corsicato was supposed to be at the 1:30 PM showing of the film that he directed, Il Volto di un’Altra at Lincoln Center’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema but didn’t show. When the movie ended my husband, Brian said, “Now I know why he didn’t show up.” Brian didn’t like it, but I did. Pappi Corsicato is known for pushing cinema to its limits and whether he’s pushed it too far this time, that’s for the individual to decide, but I thought it was a riot.

Surreal and campy are the two words that come immediately to mind, but did it go over the top, particularly the last “shitty” scene? (You’ll see.) Beyond the wackiness, Il Volto di un’Altra is has a lot to say about today’s society and it doesn it in a stylish and funny way.

Bella (played by the oh-so-beautiful Laura Chiatti) is the star of a TV reality show about plastic surgery and her husband René (Alessandro Preziosi) is a plastic surgeon. Bella’s injured in a car accident her husband announces that she is disfigured, maybe for life and keeps her holed up in his clinic in the mountains; this is the storyline, but it’s hardly the most interesting part of the movie. With good-looking protagonists in the breathtaking setting of the Alps and nurses that look like models, Papi’s use of the grotesque in contrast with the beauty blurs the line between them and leaves us wondering which is which.

While the world obsesses about Bella and her prognosis, a comet approaches the earth’s atmosphere and may destroy it, but that’s not nearly as compelling news. Il Volto di un’Altra not only goes over the top but it explodes on its way over, and I got a kick out of it. If only Pappi had been at Open Roads to tell us what he was thinking of when he made it…