For me it was “Women Director Day” at New York’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema ; the two films I chose were Viaggio Sola from Susanna Nicchiarelli and La Scoperta Dell’Alba from Maria Sole Tognazzi. Both films were blessed with the same, amazing lead actress, Margherita Buy, Italy’s most talented and sought after actress.
I’d seen La Scoperta Dell’Alba on its opening day in Rome and though I love Buy, I’d given it a lukewarm review. It’s a fantasy of a time travelling daughter who finds an old telephone in her family’s beach house that allows her to speak to her 12-year-old self. It’s not that I can’t suspend reality and enjoy a flight of imagination once in a while but there were just too many holes in the story. Crucial to it, a missing briefcase and the reason never explained. Did it really matter why it wasn’t found all those years? I guess it did to me. And why did grown up Caterina immediately go to that phone that shouldn’t be working and dial her family’s old telephone number in the city? Would that be your first reaction? It all seemed a little too neat, too affected.
READ MY REVIEW OF LA SCOPERTA DELL’ALBA
But, and it’s a big but, the movie is to be admired for many reasons. For one thing, Susanna Nicchiarelli is delightful and bright, and what she was trying to do was very interesting. She explained that it was her desire to tell the story of Italy’s terrible Anni di Piombo (the 70s and 80s period of terrorism by the Red Brigades) in creative way, and I have, as a matter of fact, complained in this blog, that too many directors make this kind of film too documentary-like. Susanna said that Americans tell about their country’s history in a more inventive and free way that she wanted to try to emulate. To use a science fiction approach to explain a country’s history, I have to admit it, it’s pretty cool.
She explained about the intended metaphor, which I hadn’t picked up on the first time, of the woman who was trying to resolve something in her past symbolizing a country that struggles to do the same. For Italians who remember the period of terrorism, it’s not always easy to reconcile, and the effects of it are still felt by young Italians.
La Scoperta Dell’Alba was made for a couple of million euro and in 7 weeks, so that in itself is amazing, considering her attention to detail recreating the 80s, and the funny dialogue, written by Nicchiarelli herself, who not only directed and wrote the screenplay but also starred in the film, so I’m going to give her a very enthusiastic and encouraging “Wow!” and wait patiently for what she does next.
Later that day we saw the very successful and critically acclaimed Viaggio Sola from director Maria Sole Tognazzi (Ugo’s daughter, Ricky’s half-sister). Again, not the best movie I’ve ever seen (and its success perplexes me) but hearing her talk about it afterwards made me see what she was trying to do and admire her efforts.
Viaggio Sola is about a hotel “Mystery Guest”, the person who pretends to be a normal hotel guest and is really there to critique the hotel for 5 star ratings. “Are you some kind of spy?” a man who she was having a drink with asked her when he couldn’t get a straight answer about her job. “I’m a kind of a spy,” she admitted, and that was the closest she ever came to giving herself away.
Although I felt that the movie was trying to make some kind of indictment about a person who chooses to live such solitary life, traveling anonymously from hotel to hotel and not making connections, Tognazzi says that was not her intentions. She talked about how most Italian movies as portraying single women as unhappy and wanted to show one that was not, who was living this way because she really wanted to and the consequences of that decision.
The side stories of her best friend (played by Stefano Accorsi), the anthropologist (Lesley Manville) and her sister’s family were interesting but there was too much going on and if it been edited down a little it might have worked better for me.
Besides Margherita Buy, who, as my husband said, saves the movie with her subtly emotional portrayal of Irene, I loved looking at all the hotels, all part of a luxury hotel group with hotels all over the world. Tognazzi laughed she explained that when they’d finished the script they wondered if anyone would ever let them make it, and that the hotel group had come to their rescue and let them film there for free. She added that she was especially grateful because in some of the scenes she wasn’t showing the hotels in the best light; the point of the movie was Irene finding fault with them. But she added that the hotels are so beautiful that they speak for themselves, and anyone watching the movie will still be drawn to them, and that it illustrates the “maniacal” attention to detail necessary to keep 5 stars.
Both Susanna and Maria were so very charming and intelligent and surely two young directors that movie lovers from all over the world should watch for.
I Love Italian Everything 