![]() Often she lets the material speak for itself. In fact, the very sense of what constitutes the natural is the director’s target. Because the trajectory is so straightforward and follows what passes as the “natural” course of birth to adulthood, Tulli wisely avoids preachy commentary. In a series of simply framed vignettes, the film moves from the piercing of a child’s earlobes-so she can wear earrings like mom-to the manufacturing of toys and violent video games aimed at young men, rites of courtship, and pastoral sermons on the joys and responsibilities of marriage, and concludes with a wedding where two men tie the knot. Not to be missed.Īgostino Ferrente, Selfie, 2019, DCP, color, sound, 76 minutes.Īn equally intriguing work of nonfiction is Adele Tulli’s Normal. So strongly do their personalities affect us that we hope, against all odds, that their inherently good characters will see them through. While they muse about career prospects-Pietro might be a hairdresser, and Alessandro a bartender-they hardly seem prone to the illusions that hold many teenagers in thrall. The poetic realist Alessandro tries to communicate with his absent father via the video he is making and visits a memorial to Giacomo Leopardi, Italy’s greatest nineteenth-century poet. The sweet-natured Pietro is devoted to his grandmother and cooking his main worries seem to be his weight and his ability to attract girls. Best friends until Pietro is lured by an uncle to leave Naples, the two go about their daily routines, filming friends, neighbors, and relatives with directness and simplicity. Though haunted by Bifolco’s death and the same atmosphere that hangs over the teenagers in the fictional Piranhas, Alessandro and Pietro, as we come to know them, seem less likely to enter the criminal underworld. The director traveled there several years after the killing of an unarmed teenager named Davide Bifolco precisely to capture something of the life of young people in the region. Also set in Naples, Selfie is essentially a self-portrait, shot on a cellphone, of two sixteen-year-olds who live in the Traiano area of the city. While viewers are saved from what might have been a climactic bloodbath, the film’s doomed endnote-Nicola riding away with his gang to avenge his young brother’s death-is no relief.Ĭlaudio Giovannesi, Piranhas, 2019, DCP, color, sound, 112 minutes.Įxploring similar territory, Agostino Ferrente’s wonderfully unpretentious Selfie eschews the narrative arc that drives Piranhas for a freer, documentary-like approach. We follow fifteen-year-old Nicola (Francesco Di Napoli), more of a Robin Hood than the others in his cohort, as he aims to relieve his mother and local merchants from being forced to pay off the mob, displaying a gentle side also seen in his love life. Blue-collar teenagers are drawn to the easy power of the Camorra, pushing their way into working for the local thugs until they learn that all they need to replace them are guns and guts. Based on a novel by Roberto Saviano, Piranhas is a disheartening tale that seems to confirm the generational pull and endless cycle of gangs and neighborhood violence endemic to contemporary Italy-in this case, Naples. That entry, Claudio Giovannesi’s Piranhas, exhibits the same primal appeal as the director’s earlier Fiore (2016). The opening-night feature, in fact, is the overture for what follows. Throughout the films, a pervasive sense of ennui spills over into ordinary lives. It’s an umbrella theme that covers social issues as varied as immigration, gender stereotypes, and the ever-present threat posed by the Camorra. Given the conviction and heart of these films, it’s hard to conclude that the concern is the obsession of just one or two filmmakers. One anxiety that emerges loud and clear this year is a lack of hope, and the dismal future that working-class Italian youth face. Over the years, my experience has been that, even when the quality varies, this national cinema rarely avoids pertinent subject matter and, in the case of narrative films, consistently provides stellar performances. LINCOLN CENTER’S ANNUAL “OPEN ROADS” SERIES, now in its nineteenth edition, is a precious opportunity for New Yorkers to see new Italian cinema. ![]()
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