BUITONI ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL 24th - 27th May 2007 www.buitoni.ie www.ifi.ie BUITONI ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL 24th - 27th May 2007 FILM TIMES PRE-FESTIVAL ITALIAN FILMS SHOWING AT THE IFI 1 Sunday 13 May 1.00pm 8 /2 (Otto e mezzo) 1.30pm The Spivs (I vitelloni) Saturday 19 May 1.30pm The Leopard (Il gattopardo) Sunday 20 May 1.30pm The Leopard (Il gattopardo) INTRODUCTION Throughout May, Ireland will see a whole series of events celebrating Italian culture. This film event consists of seven recent films including Martin Scorsese’s epic BUITONI ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL tribute to Italian cinema, My Voyage to Italy. Thursday 24 May 6.50pm Our Land (La terra) Running throughout the weekend is Paolo Sorrentino’s new film The Family Friend, his latest film since The Consequences of Love, that proved such a hit at the IFI two years ago. Friday 25 May 6.15pm The Family Friend (L’amico di famiglia) In addition, the weekends leading up to the festival are given over to films cited as key Saturday 26 May 1.30pm Along the Ridge (Anche libero va bene) works by Scorsese and other experts on Italian cinema, two Fellini classics, and Visconti’s 5.00pm The Family Friend (L’amico di famiglia) wonderful The Leopard. 6.00pm But When Do the Girls Show Up? (Ma quando arrivano le raggazze?) The event is organised in collaboration with the Italian Embassy in Dublin, and the IFI would 9.00pm The True Legend of Tony Vilar also like to acknowledge the assistance of Film Italia, RAI Trade, The Italian Trade (La vera leggenda di Tony Vilar) Commission and the Italian Cultural Institute. Our deepest gratitude goes to Buitoni with whom we have had the pleasure of working Sunday 27 May 12.00pm My Voyage to Italy (Il mio viaggio in Italia) previously. Their interest in making the events they are associated with a success is absolute, 12.30pm As the Shadow (Come l’ombre) and their financial and creative investment has been key to the inauguration of an Italian 5.00pm But Forever in My Mind (Come te nessuno mai) cultural cornerstone for our calendar. 6.30pm The Golden Door (Nuovomondo) 6.45pm The Family Friend (L’amico di famiglia) POST-FESTIVAL ITALIAN FILMS SHOWING AT THE IFI A TASTE OF ITALY comes to the IFI on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th May Monday 28 May 1.30pm, 6.15pm The Family Friend (L’amico di famiglia) As well as the finest of Buitoni pasta dishes specially prepared for the festival at the IFI Tuesday 29 May 1.30pm, 6.15pm The Family Friend (L’amico di famiglia) restaurant, film-goers will be treated to a free food and wine tasting on stalls in the IFI Atrium: Fumagalli ham; Gattinara wines from Travaglini and Brunello, Montepulciano Wednesday 30 May 1.30pm, 6.15pm The Family Friend (L’amico di famiglia) and Brut wines from Gavioli; coffee from Saeco; chocolate and sweets from Ferrero. Thursday 31 May 1.30pm, 6.15pm The Family Friend (L’amico di famiglia) All screenings are at the IFI, 6 Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2. Tickets from www.irishfilm.ie or 01 679 3477 or in person at the IFI. 1 BUITONI ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL BUITONI ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2 Our Land The Family Friend (La terra) (L’amico di famiglia) Director: Sergio Rubini Director: Paolo Sorrentino May 24 (6.50) May 25-31 A compulsively watchable combination of lopsided Italian comedy and Southern film noir, The skewed emotions and cool images of The Consequences of Love already announced Paolo La terra is the most energetic and appealing of director-actor Sergio Rubini’s eight movies to Sorrentino as a director who dares to be different. Indeed, this striking follow-up positively baits date. Fabrizio Bentivoglio heads a bold cast as an exiled son who returns to his native Puglia and the audience by making the central character a loathsome 70-year-old small-time money-lender finds himself thrust into the role of capo famiglia. who puts the squeeze on his unfortunate clients while claiming he’s got their best interests at heart. Though the mafia is not involved here, the clever screenplay by Rubini and his co-writers has a lot of other things to say about the violence that ails the South. Luigi Di Santo (Bentivoglio) has Giacomo Rizzo’s Don Geremia de Geremei is a piece of work all right, but as he skitters around lived in Milan since, as a teenager, he accidentally killed his father. As the curtain rises, he steps with one arm in a cast and an ever-dangling plastic bag, he’s also one of the year’s most off a train in the deserted, sun-bleached town where he grew up. He intends to spend only a memorable screen characters, totally assured in his worldview that life’s cruel and only the few days to sign some papers so he and his three brothers can sell the farmland they inherited. greedy prosper. Until, that is, he meets his match in the statuesque Rosalba (Laura Chiatti), But the town immediately draws him into its intrigues. His wacky businessman brother Michele whose father has been reduced to seeking Geremei’s services to pay for her wedding. For the (Emilio Solfrizzi) is fixated on running for political office, though he’s up to his ears in debt to price of a sexual favour, she beats down the interest rate on the loan to a fraction of the quoted local money-lender Tonino (Rubini). The violent Tonino is also linked to Luigi’s hot-headed half- 100 percent, and she may not be finished yet. brother Aldo (Massimo Venturiello), who’s in love with Tonino’s Romanian mistress Tania (Alisa Bystrova). When Tonino is shot during an eerie night-time religious procession, both brothers fall It’s hard not to squirm when watching the elderly lecher fall on youthful flesh, but Sorrentino’s under suspicion. prepared to hold the viewer at a distance so we can form our own moral assessment of the protagonist’s self-serving imperatives. Moreover, he’s got the visual language to put Geremei’s As a director, Rubini, who started in 1990 with the notable The Station, takes a giant leap perceptions in context, whether it’s poring over Fellini-esque grotesquerie, or recalling early Dario forward compared with undistinguished recent efforts and puts his finger on the crass Argento in the strangely unsettling architectural exteriors. Cut together to keep us in constant foolishness of contemporary Italy. surprise, this is maverick movie-making to be sure. Treasure it while you can.—Trevor Johnston. ITALY, 2006. SUBTITLED. COLOUR. DOLBY DIGITAL STEREO. 112 MIN. ITALY, 2006. SUBTITLED. COLOUR. ANAMORPHIC. DOLBY DIGITAL STEREO. 105 MIN. 3 BUITONI ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL BUITONI ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL 4 Along the Ridge But When Do the Girls Show Up? (Anche libero va bene) (Ma quando arrivano le ragazze?) Director: Kim Rossi Stuart Director: Pupi Avati May 26 (1.30) May 26 (6.00) Tommi (Alessandro Morace) is an 11-year-old who lives with his sister Viola (Marta Nobili) and An important figure in Italian cinema since the 1970s, writer-producer-director Pupi Avati has father Renato (writer-director Kim Rossi Stuart). It is a family that is struggling to stay afloat, with made horror movies, historical dramas and comedies. Despite their range, his films are highly the father trying to work (as a cinematographer) and look after his kids, while at the same time distinctive and personal, with autobiographical elements unobtrusively woven into the narratives. trying to cope with debts. The children’s mother is an occasional, disturbing presence. Unreliable The deceitfulness of human nature, the unpredictability of relations between men and women, and fickle, she returns to the household for brief periods and then abandons her family for other and a fascination with the mysterious and the fantastic are concerns that define what Italian relationships. All of this we see through the eyes of Tommi, who wants his family to be back critics have dubbed the ‘Avati genre’. together and has a growing, slightly envious relationship with a boy who has just moved into the same apartment block and who comes from a much more stable and affluent family. But When Do the Girls Show Up? is a semi-autobiographical tale about the soaring dramas and bitter rivalries of youth and what happens when boyhood bonds are tested in adult life. Using this situation as the basis for the drama, well-known actor (he starred in the recent Musicians Gianca (Paolo Briguglia) and Nick (Claudio Santamaria) meet on a train bound for the Romanzo criminale and The Keys to the House) and now impressive debut director Kim Rossi Umbria Jazz Festival. Though Gianca’s years of musical training contrast sharply with Nick’s untutored talent, the two become friends on their return to Bologna. They form a band, but Stuart fashions an honest, deeply affecting and heartfelt story. There are no easy answers in this Nick’s natural talent catapults him into a successful career while Gianca is forced to pursue other all too believable scenario, and Along the Ridge is way beyond soap opera because of its avenues. Years later, the men’s friendship is put to the test when Nick returns to Bologna for a intelligence, its use of the urban landscapes of Rome and the astonishing quality of the concert. The relationship between the two men is complicated by Nick’s involvement with performances, especially that of Alessandro Morace, who plays Tommi in a completely natural Gianca’s girlfriend, whose own ambiguous attitude sums up the complex web of loyalties, and sensitive way.— Adrian Wootton.