One thing Americans don’t seem like about Luigi Lo Cascio’s La Città Ideale is that even though it was filmed in Siena, you don’t see much of Siena. The first time I heard that, I thought, “What are they talking about? I remember seeing Piazza Del Campo and the tower.” But it’s true, for a lot of the movie it could be happening pretty much anywhere. Michele is in lawyers’ offices, a hospital, his apartment and other places that could have been filmed on a studio lot, for all I know. Most Americans I’ve talked to really liked the movie, but just wished there could have been more of “Italy” in it.
That made me think; do people penalize Italian movies if they don’t get their “Italian fix” from them?
Take a director like Giuseppe Tornatore. Why did his movies like Cinema Paradiso and Baarìa touch the hearts of Americans and yet his English language movie, La Migliore Offerta, one that takes place in “some ambiguous European city” is having such trouble making its way here. Are the first two movies better, or are they just more “Italian”.
Would Americans have liked Paolo Sorrentino’s ‘This Must Be The Place’ better if he had been making a road trip through Tuscany to hunt down his father’s tormentor instead of one across mid-America? Was it really such a bad film, or was it just not “Italian enough”.
When you watch an Italian movie, do you prefer vintage Italy with sentimental story lines? Do you prefer an Italian film about villagers in small Sicilian towns to ones about modern Milan city dwellers? Maybe that’s why Carlo Verdone’s comedies don’t get shown much in America. Maybe if we are watching a movie about a Roman guy he’d better be handsome and riding a Vespa around the Coliseum, not a balding middle-aged guy who is spending a lot of his time on-screen in his psychiatrist’s office, as Carlo usually is.
Do we dislike Italian movies when they are “not Italian enough”?
I Love Italian Everything 