Happy Family

Happy Family by Gabriele Salvatores is a movie that combines different forms of art: from literature -Pirandello's echoes are thick in the texture of the plot- to music -the black & white sequence on the notes of Chopin's Nocturne n.20 is of memorable beauty: Milan by night, the speed of the underground, the street workers, the skyscrapers' profile and the Dome.

Art and life mingle. Ezio tries to keep the two separated as he shouts to his nagging characters: "This is a film, not life!". But Vincenzo immediately counters: "There is no difference."

Everything is intertwined in this movie that ends and finishes with the opening and closing of a theatre curtain. The frame is in fact Pirandello's Six characters in Search of an Author, only in Salvatores's case the characters are eight and the author is a screenwriter, 38-year-old Ezio, who decides to make something about his life and starts writing an art film.

And that's how the story begins: the characters present themselves and the relationship that link them. Altogether they form a happy family. But happy family is also the clique that the writer creates around himself. Everything is a farce, everything is a caricature. Even the chance encounter between Anna and Ezio, the turning point of the whole story, becomes a surreal vignette underlined by a heavy presence of the colour yellow (yellow flowers, yellow car, yellow houses).

Every single frame seems the result of a careful composition, as if every single frame was a painting. This is especially true in the sequence where Ezio and Caterina make love - the reference is to Renaissance painting. The poetry of it all is moving.

It is reassuring that 50 years after Fellini celebrated the glamour of Italian way of doing it in La Dolce Vita there are still film-makers capable of conveying the charm of our culture, the beauty of our country, the sense of aesthetics that permeates our daily life. However, once again, it seems that Italian cinema cannot express beauty outside the bourgeois circle, that of normal people, less rich, less glamorous, less Milanese.

And still the movie lightly touches upon several themes such as family, love, art, illness, death, the sense of life. Some scenes, though, have a life of their own and are there just for entertainment's sake, such as the sequence set at the dodgy massage studio of a Chinese girl or the question that the protagonist keeps asking himself: "What the fuck is a seagull doing in a city with no sea?"

The film is dedicated to the people who are scared: scared to fall in love, scared to die, scared to smell, scared to have smeared underwear in an important moment, scared to fly, scared to be lonely, scared to fall ill, scared to age, scared to.... Well, scared people. I still can't make my head around this opening sequence. But I guess the idea is to give hope.
After all, Happy Family is a good-feeling film about life and beauty. And it's meant to celebrate both.

The devil wears... Top Shop?

Take The September Issue, the documentary about Vogue US larger than life editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, and downgrade it by at least ten times. There you have me interning at the fashion desk of a gossip magazine in London.

I should feel like Andrea of The devil wears Prada, only with far less glamour. It was my third day today, yet I still walk in the newsroom unnoticed: a journalist asked me if I knew where I was going this morning - she must have thought I had gotten lost. My tasks are those tasks for which people usually get paid: emptying boxes, picking up the mail, moving clothes from one rail to another, filling dockets.

All this....not even to enter the fantastic world of fashion & beauty journalism because I frankly don't give a damn about that - what's a highlighter? What's the difference between a bangle and a bracelet? How do you call this piece of fabric that looks like a dress, but might as well be a shirt, a curtain, a sheet? - I keep asking my colleague. And at the same time I keep asking myself why such a smart girl would like to work in such a vain industry, writing about silly things, spending so much time and effort doing something that means so little, after all.

And we are sitting on plastic boxes in a tiny cupboard, because they don't have spare chairs to give us. Obviously, when our boss tells us that more than half of the chairs are free because people are not there.

Darwin talks among us

It's been a long time since I first started this post. It was originally meant for the Freaky Brits section -a section that I haven't updated in a while, I must be used to almost any freaky thing these folks do, now. But I decided to make a bit more personal, since all the original references are lost in oblivion. I barely remember an article that appeared in the first days of December on the Evening Standard suggesting that London commuters have adopted a Darwinist strategy to cope with overcrowded trains. I also remember a conversation with the editor of Nam, a woman who has lived in New York for many years and was sadly surprised at the aggressiveness of people in the Tube.

When I first moved to London, I heard the name of Darwin quite often. That was not much of a shock: last year it was the 200th anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the origin of species. No wonder Darwin is so influential. Along with Galileo, who deprived men of the pride of being at the centre of the universe, and Freud, who deprived men of the pride of being self controlled at all times, Darwin has deprived men of another major pride: being unique among the creatures on earth.

At first, I was very reluctant to accept the pervasive force of Darwin's presence. Mostly because I felt more the Spencerian attitude, which is the application of Darwin's principle to society. The idea that just the fit ones make it repelled me. Which was even more striking to my self-conscience, because at 16 I once wrote that I firmly believe in Darwin's principle. In the fight against my mom and her illness, I felt the power of Darwin's theories and made them mine. Six years after that, compassion and understanding, and probably having been hurt, have scraped the crust of my toughness.

It was a wake-up call the disgust I felt towards Darwin. I realised that as much as I don't like to define myself a Catholic, and being an atheist I am most definitely not in belief, I am Catholic in culture and frame of mind. The idea of a Church, a community of men and women that takes care of you, even if you are unfit, is deeply rooted in my mind.

It is not by chance, perhaps, that today I read once more the name of the great revolutionary, Darwin, in the God issue of the New Statesman. In an interview, Martin Rees, astronomer and president of the Royal Society, referred to Darwin, evolution, DNA and said that creationists are "intellectually deprived. They don't appreciate the wonderful story that science has opened up for us." Because it's all about storytelling, no? I thought it was a nice way to put it.

Another interesting point he made was when he said that educated people, although aware of being the outcome of billions of years of evolution, tend to feel somehow at the end of it. Now, I consider myself an educated person, but it took me just a look at my nephew when he was born, a tiny fragile body, wrinkled and fresh, to understand that we are most certainly not at the end of anything. I remember that one of the first thing I thought, when I saw him, touched him, held him, was: Here is someone who will bury me. Someone who will make his time long after I'm gone. And I was nearly 20. And I didn't even have a degree back then.

Thump, thump, thump

I was walking in the galleries from one train to another in the Tube today. A mass of people walked regular steps, one after the other, most of them looking down, pensive, tired from the early morning awakening, somehow gray. I heard the distinctive thump, thump, thump of the feet. All at the same time, mine making a weird high-pitch sound compared to the others. Thump, thump, thump. Not a single word, not a sound standing out from the crowd.

Later on, while I was wandering in the fancy streets of Kensington half like a stray dog and half like Alice, I thought about Marianne. Recently she said we could hang a plaque on our front door: House of the lost! We are all lost in a way or another: some from a professional point of view (Marianne), some from a sentimental point of view (Bruno), some from both points of view (me!). And then I thought about my best friend. On such a lovely day she might be enjoying her pregnancy, and in a few months time she'll be strolling about with her pram and her newly-born daughter. The thump, thump, thump she feels now is not of shuffling. It's the kick of life straight from her womb.

I started Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. It's one of those fine books that, while you read it, it makes you want to change your life completely following in the protagonist's footsteps. So it made me fantasize about a career as a literature teacher somewhere in the world. Until I stumbled in this sentence that had the strength of an epiphany:

It was like this veil that meant nothing to her anymore yet without which she would be lost. She had always worn the veil. Did she want to wear it or not? She did not know.

Maybe Yassi, who has always worn the veil, can join us in the house. We, who do things, have feelings, pursue dreams and don't even know why anymore...

La Dolce Vita - 50 years later

This month's issue of Sight & Sound -perhaps the only British magazine I would die to work for- features an "Italian Cinema Special", with interviews to Luca Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton, respectively director and producer/star of I am love (out now), an account of the state of the seventh art in the Bel Paese, a thorough review of La Dolce Vita and what it represented and still represents in Italian cultural landscape, and a review of Marco Bellocchio's Vincere, a powerful biopic of Mussolini's life seen through the eyes of his mistress, Ida Dalser.

I devoured the section with the voracity and nostalgia of the expat craving for times long gone. Coming two days after watching Videocracy and a month or two after watching Fellini's masterpiece (shame on me, I know), the special left me with a bitter taste in the mouth. I have always underestimated Italian cinema, ignorant of the fact that some of our directors have made history. I have always underestimated the passionate storytelling that some of our filmmakers are capable of. I have always underestimated the richness in stories that are worth telling in our history, in our past, in our present, in our future. I have always underestimated the array of talents that work behind the screen: screenwriters, cinematographers, costume and set designers, make up artists, score creators. And for a moment I thought I could belong there, where things are first shaped, where dreams first materialize in drafts and sketches.

Despite this enthusiasm, a shady cloud hovers on Italy's cinema: "In a culture we love, we don't have a cultural policy," said Gomorra's producer Domenico Procacci, denouncing the lack of investments and funding. Still, some sparks of creativity and cultural provocation are lighting. If the tv offers the Italiano medio no hope, at least in the darkness of the cinema hall they can find the brightness of our crème de la crème artists.

And finally, La Dolce Vita, the movie that defined an era, the movie that still defines abroad a country. It feels so close to my heart now, even though I don't have the rest of the marvellous cityscapes of Rome. In his analysis of the film, Lee Marshall says: "the theme of men who are lost and know it, but are too lazy, cynical or self-hating to do much about it". He's scribbling my pain with his pen, typing my life with his fingers. He's pinpointing my plight of a middle-class unsatisfied girl, who still lives at her parents' expenses, wants to do everything and in the end lingers on doing just nothing. But that's another story.

La Dolce Vita brings to full circle this special section: all which epitomises Italy is portrayed in this film. Marcello, the bored journalist who dreams of being a writer; Paparazzo, the reckless photographer who treads upon people's feelings for a shot even when they're stricken by family tragedy; Emma, the nerve-racking woman who gives enduring love and forgives and struts and frets; the aristocrats and expatriate intellectuals, who enjoy a life of pleasure and idleness. And then the Catholic sketches, from the impressive opening scene with a Christ seemingly rock-star carried around on a helicopter hovering over the Vatican, to the fake miracle sequence, a stark critique of children's exploitation, media leeching, people's ignorance and, nevertheless, a beautiful meshing of awe, superstition and faith. And then the final scene, which is almost unintelligible. A sting ray has beached, the party guests go on the shore to stare at the "monster". Paola, the sweet teenage girl Marcello has met earlier on, is there as well, smiling at the man with naivety and sensuality at the same time.

Marcello represents the typical Italian man, wanting love, yet enjoying the hunt. In this respect, La Dolce Vita can be about the "sensuality of power and its masculinity", just as much as Vincere. "Italy gave the world its first camera-friendly dictator," argues Guido Bonsaver, author of the article The Great Seducer. Mussolini was definitely not the only one, I would add. Videocracy's images are still whirling in the back of my head and Lele Mora's words about how Berlusconi is obsessed with his image. And then I recall one the Prime Minister's neighbour in Sardinia, Marella, who talked about a little device Berlusconi has built in his villa for his entertainment: a sort of volcano that he activates with a wireless remote control. The man who rules our country: a 73-year-old who amuses himself by making a fake volcano erupt in his luxurious villa surrounded by bikini-clad ladies. Then the sequence shifts to another 73-year-old who has to make ends meet with a 500 euros pension, surrounded by anyone. Would it make an effective cinematic sequence?

And then the Prime Minister has the guts to say to people who criticise him for being detached from reality that they have no sense of humour, no joy for life. It's easy to say that when you're billionaire, can afford the triviality of hair and facial treatment to look younger than Madonna and can change people's career with a phone call. But there is still room for Resistance. Despite an unhealthy populism in Italy, a vice that has marred more than once our history and has made people blind before a persona's charisma, there are still corners where the imagination is free to dream again of a sweet life. Corners for poets and filmmakers to swim against the tide.

Videocracy - why sometimes I am ashamed of being Italian

Booties, tits, half-naked women that wiggle like snakes. The spotlight is on them, the tv is on, Italian families are watching. And in the end, again, young girls dancing, or least moving, swinging, touching themselves in a provocative way. But the music is disquieting, the beats are deep and at regular intervals. The girls look like meaningless puppets. Maybe they are.

I've just come back from a night at the movies and drink with friends. We watched Videocracy, the controversial documentary by Erik Gandini. Presented last year at the 66th Film Festival of Venice, Videocracy's trailer was refused screening in both Rai, the state television, and Mediaset, obviously. The film tells the story of the dodgy intertwining of television, power and politics in Italy. The movie features people like Lele Mora, celebrity-maker, tv agent, proud fan of Mussolini (was he so naif to show on camera that his ringtone is actually a fascist hymn?) and, of course, close friend of Berlusconi, and Maurizio Corona, the gangsta-like self-made-hero that exploits celebrities' mischiefs to make huge profits. And then a swathe of wannabes, from the sexy, albeit often unco-ordinated veline-wannabes to the sweet Riccardo, mechanic with the passion for karate and singing -the Italian combination of Van Damme and Ricky Martin, he says- who cannot find a girlfriend because of his stalking mother and spend his time and money pursuing the easy way to success via castings and auditions.

It was all very depressing. Nothing that I didn't know before. But to see our culture squeezed in 80 minutes of hopeless wannabes dotted by references to our media emperor, who is a clown and our Prime Minister, was quite devastating. And then I started thinking.

Paparazzo... to think that we invented this word. The mythical Paparazzo, a.k.a. Padua-born Walter Santesso, who plays so well the part of the ruthless scoop-seeking photographer in Fellini's La Dolce Vita. Is it there where everything started? That film represented the best of our culture, the poetry, the fun, the entertainment, the music, in our majestic capital, Rome, the Eternal City. And at the same time, the worst of times to come: the debauchery, the exploitation, the ostentation, the showcasing of everything, religion included. Did everything start back then? Was Fellini, perhaps the most famous and appreciated Italian director in the history of cinema, an admirer of that ideology of beauty, which later turned into vulgarity, which later turned into pornography? Is Corona and his clique of Robin Hoods -interestingly enough, they had the same accent from the North-East as the original Paparazzo- the modern embodiments of La Dolce Vita? Are Salvatore and the posse of tronisti from Maria De Filippi's Uomini e Donne the new decadent aristocrats who idle in luxurious villas in Sardinia?

And then I started brooding over my recent visit at the National Gallery. I visited the halls with works from the XIV and XV centuries mainly. Italian and Flemish/German arts in comparison. Italian workpieces flourished with beauty, harmony and colour. The scenes, inspired by the Bible or by myths, abounded in buxom girls, profuse landscapes and curving lines. Flemish and German portraits were austere and cold, the lines harsh, the backgrounds dark, people's expressions had nothing of the sweetness and warmth of Italian subjects. Looking at those paintings I had the feeling that in Italy people dreamt of an idyllic place to live, had fun and enjoyed the pleasures of life. Our Northern counterparts gave me the impression of living in a rather boring and strict culture.
The women that starred in XV century painting, naked and beautiful, shifted from those frames into the magic box. And now we have veline, meteorine, schedine. I still can't decide whether we are just more upfront than other cultures, who are righteous on the outside and just as immoral underground, or if we are a lonely island where celebrities are made like sand-castles. And just as easily as sand-castles are knocked down at the first tide.

Then, there was him, the guy we are fed up with mentioning and nevertheless comes up every time. In this case I must say the fault is of Italian people. Leaving out the fact that his supporters sing whacky songs that make them a mockery of themselves more than the "Saviour", as he likes to depict himself, I wonder how they cannot realise that what makes Berlusconi a successful entrepreneur is exactly why they would be wary of having him as politician. A businessman seeks his and his own profit. And Berlusconi is a businessman, before being Prime Minister. A politician should take care of people's interest. Someone who just cares for his own shouldn't be fit to rule, I would quote from The Economist. The fact that Lele Mora compares him with Mussolini makes it blatant.

It's sad to think that I was born and grew up within this system, dreaming about teenage stardom -I was a huge fan of Non è la Rai- and looking at women's big boobs in Colpo Grosso. It's sad to know that I had to go out of my country to fully realise what's going on, how vain and silly people can be for 15 or even less minutes of fame -a fat fifty-something housewife getting naked with saggy tits and flaming red hair at a casting???!!! The price to pay for living the good life, the Dolce Vita we all dream about, is quite high. The bill is to give up your dignity. No, thanks.

But most depressing of all were the final data about Italy. After the flashing lights, the naked bodies, the tv studio, the frenzy of it all, two terse sentences:

Italy is ranked 77th in the freedom of the press worldwide list*

Italy is ranked 84th in the gender equality worldwide list**

Which is quite gloomy for an Italian young woman who wants to become a journalist, ain't it?





* According to the Press Freedom Index 2009, realised by Reporters without Borders, Italy is ranked 49th.
* The datum refers to the The Global Gender Gap Report 2007, sponsored by the World Economic Forum.