Italian Film Festival – Boisterous and thoughtful

The best days for Italian films may have passed but they are still hard to beat for boisterous family comedies and thoughtful historical dramas. Adding always attractive casts and explosive outbursts of emotion means they seldom disappoint. The 2011 festival contains one classic masterpiece, Bicycle Thieves (1948), and a reprise (L'ultimo Bacio, The Last Kiss) from 2001 as well as 17 new releases.

A selection from this year's festival, which is screening in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch throughout October:

LA PRIMA COSA BELLA (The First Beautiful Thing) is a typically chaotic family-based comedy drama that moves quickly through a thread-thin plot but gives the big cast ample opportunity to display their thespian talents. To add to the generational confusion, the story moves forward from a starting point at a beach carnival in the early 1970s, when a mother is roped into a beauty pageant, and then back from the present when she is on her death-bed. Stefania Sandrelli, who smouldered in such 1960s and 1970s classics as The Conformist, 1900, and Seduced and Abandoned, steals all her scenes as the dying matriarch. Her two children, one of whom has turned to drugs, recall how her beauty and self-obsession forced them out of her life. They and the rest of the family gather for the final farewell with all their emotional baggage intact.

BACIAMI ANCORA (Kiss Me Again) reveals all you need to know about the battle of the sexes as experienced by several couples, who first met at university (some were first seen in L’ultimo Bacio, The Last Kiss). They have since moved into their 30s and 40s, some with partners and children, some without. Most of the women are cheated on and deceived; occasionally they respond in kind. Two get pregnant and are forced to reconsider their positions. The men are bed hoppers, too, but mostly lack emotional commitment. One is a manic depressive, another has just been freed from jail. It’s a tangled but tantalising tale that surprisingly maintains its momentum all the way through its two hours and 25 minutes.

HABEMUS PAPAM (We Have a Pope) is a fictional film that depicts, much like The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), the conclave of the College of Cardinals that follows the death of a Pope. The film starts with actual scenes from the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005, with all its pomp and media interest. But the facts are soon left behind as becomes clear few of the cardinals want the job. In the end, a reluctant and overwhelmed pontiff is chosen (played by 85-year-old French actor Michel Piccoli). He immediately succumbs to a panic attack and deep depression about whether he can fulfil the confidence placed in him by his colleagues. A psycho-therapist, played by co-writer and director Nanni Moretti, is called in to help so the Pope can be proclaimed to the tens of thousands gathered in St Peter’s Square, not to mention the world media. But due to the secrecy of the conclave, no one outside knows why the new Pope has failed to appear. The story then diverges into parallel stories of the cardinals waiting for the conclave to end and the new Pontiff eluding his closest advisers to wander the streets of Rome. Both sides of the tale are told with gentle humour and respect for the institution, though that should not stop non-believers from attending.