Last weekend, the New Italian Cinema Festival at the Embarcadero Center Theater in San Francisco closed The San Francisco Film Society’s (SFFS) impressive annual Fall Season of mini-festivals. The season included a series of film festivals–Kong Cinema, French Cinema Now, Taiwan Film Days, NY/SF International Children’s Film Festival, SF International Animation Festival–each lasting a few days and showcasing new films from around the world.
Many emerging Italian filmmakers were present to introduce their films and participate in a Q&A afterwards. Filmmaker Alessandro Aronadio’s first feature, “One Life, Maybe Two,” is a dark coming of age story about Matteo, a directionless young adult who crashed into a parked police car when driving on a slippery road. Two stories play out simultaneously: one in which the crash happens and another in which he stops in time. In both realities, Matteo’s anger and boredom are revealed. The film often references Francois Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows,” the story of a younger, troubled youth who gets dealt an unfair set of cards.
Aronadio picks up on the running and water imagery from “The 400 Blows” and uses them in his picture to show both freedom and imprisonment. There is a beautiful ending in which Matteo meets himself at a protest–in one story he is a protester and in the other the riot police. These parallel stories so often feel like a weak plot device that we focus more on how the two stories play out differently than on the characters within them. Perhaps Aronadio should have consulted Woody Allen’s “Melinda and Melinda,” a film that tells two parallel stories and finds unexpected meaning in both, yet never seems gimmicky.
Francesco Falaschi’s “This World is For You,” also presented at the festival, is, on the surface, a light-hearted comedy about yet another directionless youth, Teo, who yearns to be a writer but is sidetracked by family problems, including his father’s debilitating illness. On one level, “This World”, a story of a disparate father and son desperately trying to communicate but hurting each other as they fail. On another, it’s the story of dealing with the realities of first love, when the object of Teo’s desire, Chiara, is a strong, independent woman whose research on wine will ultimately lead her out of the country and put an expiration date on their relationship. It’s also the story of how the scatterbrained, ambitious Teo, who can’t figure out how to write something honest, finds a way to meet family expectations as well as those he has for himself.
“Habemus Papam,” which has been making positive waves on the festival circuit at Cannes and the Toronto International Film Festival, was the much-hyped closing-night film, and the only film by a truly seasoned actor-director, Nanni Moretti. The film, which will be released theatrically in 2012, is sure-footed and mature, a clever and hilarious satire about the choosing of a new pope.
When the new pope, Melville (Michel Piccoli), is chosen, he suffers from stage fright, starts to hyperventilate and absolutely refuses to make his first public address and appearance. Hijinks ensue. They bring a non-religious psychoanalyst (Moretti) to talk him through it, but hold their sessions in public and forbid the psychoanalyst from asking him questions about sex, his parents and his childhood. They hold the psychoanalyst in the Vatican until the unveiling of the new pope, and in his boredom, he starts up a volleyball tournament between the cardinals.
While many great laughs are to be had, the film works so well as satire because of the way it humanizes Melville and the other cardinals. We see the cardinals in their quarters, playing solitaire, putting together puzzles, taking their medication and anxious to explore Rome while they have a chance.
And most importantly, we see Melville, terrified about the task he is being asked to perform for the church. He runs away from the Vatican and begins walking and exploring the streets of Rome, contemplating his doubts and trying to understand his place in the world. He sees a second psychoanalyst who does not know he is the pope, and when asked his profession, Melville responds that he is an actor.
Melville is so realistic, so human, that it becomes hard for us and for him to see himself as this divinely holy figure. All this discussion of acting is not in vain, for when he is finally forced to take up his post, we see him dressing in his papal costume, preparing for the biggest performance of his life. In a way, the film suggests he has gone into theater after all.
The key festivals of the Fall Season may be over, but the SFFS is still screening independent and foreign film at headquarters, and gearing up for its winter programming and the annual San Francisco International Film Festival in the spring.