ROBERTO ROSSELLINI'S THE SOLITUDE TRILOGY aka WHAT I'M UP TO TODAY

Roberto Rossellini's The Solitude Trilogy has been screening over at my workplace all weekend.  Today marks the only time during the run that all three films, Stromboli, Europa '51, & Voyage to Italy will be shown in a single day.  I'm going to try to make it through all of 'em, though, if recent history has proven anything, I probably will give up before the day is done.  Extra incentive to stay at least through the 2nd film: Europa '51 is rarely screened theatrically; in fact, it's a rare 16mm print borrowed from a private collector that's being projected today.

The following film synopses are lifted directly from the NW Film Center's listings:

Stromboli:

The film where Rossellini fatefully met Ingrid Bergman, STROMBOLI—like their later VOYAGE TO ITALY—is a semi-autobiographical portrait of its star’s stranger-in-a-strange-land predicament. Bergman plays a Lithuanian war refugee who marries a fisherman on the remote Sicilian island of Stromboli in order to escape an internment camp. Moving from the environmental reality that characterized his earlier neo-realist films to a psychological realism foreshadowing Antonioni’s L’AVENTURRA (1960), Rossellini’s film contrasts the island’s desolate, volcanic landscapes with its leading lady’s emotional turmoil. The barren, sulfurous rock proves a formidable and unpredictable rival for Bergman’s ferocious will. “An intensely moving exploration of sainthood and spirituality.”—Martin Scorsese. (107 mins.)

Europa '51:

The second collaboration between Rossellini and Bergman chronicles the life of a wealthy American woman living in Rome who is thrown into turmoil when her young son commits suicide over what he perceived to be her lack of affection for him. The woman’s grief leads her to the realization that she has been living a shallow, bourgeois existence and propels her to change her ways. As if on a spiritual quest, she begins devoting her life to helping the less fortunate—a sick prostitute, an unwed mother with numerous children, and a young boy—all of which disturbs her husband in tragic reaction. While the film has been viewed as Rossellini’s vision of the state of the world in all its confusion, many also read it as an exploration of Ingrid Bergman’s personal struggle. (113 mins.)

Voyage to Italy (aka Journey to Italy):

A reserved British couple (Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders) take a break from the chaos of London and retreat to the rugged landscape of Naples, only to find that outside of the structure of their everyday lives, the tedium of their marriage begins to emerge. Under the glistening surface of its minimal plot, Rossellini’s film amasses subtle details and small moments that build towards one of postwar cinema’s most enigmatically poignant conclusions. Again, Rossellini’s use of the environment as a relevant character is a precursor to Antonioni’s bleak industrial landscapes, serving as a link between neo-realism and the subjective, psychological cinema of the 1960s. (97 mins.)

The Solitude Trilogy: Stromboli, Europa '51 & Voyage to Italy screens at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art Museum).  Click here for more info.

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PIFF 35 Preview: THE SALT OF LIFE

The Salt of Life is writer-director Gianni Di Gregorio's second film, after the charming surprise that was Mid-August Lunch, to follow the modest exploits of an aging Italian man named Gianni (played by Di Gregorio, naturally).  The first film had Gianni entertaining his elderly mother and her friends, cooking them elaborate meals while watching over them.  This time around, Gianni's on his own and looking for a little romance, despite the fact that he's a family man.

Di Gregorio places Gianni into a context that makes the moral aspect of Gianni's quest harmless, allowing the audience to be amused by his missteps, rather than concentrate on the infidelity.  We know early on that he's in a sexless marriage, broke, unemployed and endlessly called upon by his mother and others for errands and help.  In these relationships, he exudes a selflessness bordering on the masochistic, never really taking anything for himself, always accepting what comes to him, no matter how thankless.  So, when a friend keeps suggesting that Gianni seek a little pleasure for himself in the form of an affair, the logic of the world presented makes it seem a reasonable route, even if it takes a while for Gianni to come around to the idea.

The Salt of Life is the rare sequel that works, fully recapturing the magic that made Mid-August Lunch such a treat.  It's completely unnecessary to have seen the former film in order to appreciate it, although a quick look at Mid-August Lunch (it's a breezy 80-min. in length) will only deepen your joy when watching the new movie.

In the screening that I saw, there were numerous moments that evoked roars of laughter from the audience.  This is easily the funniest film I've seen in 2012, wringing humor out of even the most cliched of situations.  It's a rare treat and I'll probably still be talking about it as the year comes to a close.

The Salt of Life will screen for the public at the Lake Twin Cinema on Feb. 10th at 6pm and, again, at Cinemagic on Feb. 12th at 5:45pm.

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Portland International Film Festival preview day 12: MY JOY & THE DOUBLE HOUR

Set against the depressed landscape of the Ukrainian roadside, Sergei Loznitsa's My Joy hitches a ride with a young trucker, Georgy, as he hauls wheat to an unnamed destination.  Along the way, he encounters a young prostitute, an elderly war veteran, a gang of homeless robbers and no end of human misery.

And then a violent shift in the action and story occurs, leaving the audience stranded with a new and oddly inaccessible principal character, which is beyond confusing since there's very little in the way of a transition leading up to this change.  The only holdover from the first part of the film being a dark, malignant tone that never lets up.

My Joy plays at the Broadway Theater on Feb. 19th at 8pm and Feb. 20th at 6:45pm.  An additional screening is scheduled at Cinemagic on Feb. 21st at 2pm.

 

Guiseppe Capotondi's The Double Hour is an odd duck of a film, starting out as an exploration of one genre before hitting the brakes and setting off in an entirely different direction.  The first third of the film had me floored as it promised to be the most original, mature and honest love story since David Gordon Green's All the Real Girls. 

Alas, it wasn't meant to be, since the narrative quickly drops a bomb in the lap of the audience, sending the remainder of the film off onto a more conventional, thriller-based path, which is still very entertaining but left me wishing that the filmmakers had held true to the initial thrust of the story.  It's absolutely worth seeing for that first section but somewhat diminished by the decision to move away from a simple tale of connection between two lonely people.

The Double Hour plays at Cinemagic on Feb. 19th at 4pm.  Additional screenings are scheduled at the Broadway Theater on Feb. 21st at 2pm, Feb. 22nd at 8:45pm and Feb. 23rd at 9:15pm.

Portland International Film Festival preview day 10: THE FOUR TIMES & THE HOUSEMAID

Every year 'round festival time, I tend to encounter at least one feature that I end up considering my little secret.  It's usually something that didn't get a lot of advance press and/or awards gathered from Cannes or Sundance.  A couple of years ago, my "secret" was Jens Lien's The Bothersome Man.  This time around, it's Michelangelo Frammartino's The Four Times from Italy.

Frammartino's second movie is an entirely dialogue-free investigation of the transforming nature of existence, featuring an almost completely unexpected and very original shift in both the narrative and subject about a quarter of the way into the film.  It's a picture that successfully captures the most mundane aspects of rural life in ways that I've never seen depicted on celluloid.  Imagine a movie that gives equal billing to an elderly gentleman, a goat, a tree and a pile of charcoal.  Can't quite picture it?  Well, that's why you should catch The Four Times, which along with Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and Certified Copy is one of my favorites playing at PIFF this year.

The Four Times plays at the Whitsell Auditorium on Feb. 19th at 8:30pm.  An additional screening is scheduled at the Broadway Theater on Feb. 20th at 2:45pm.

Hailing from South Korea, The Housemaid is a melodrama featuring more than a small dollop of the extreme situations that cinema fans have come to expect of films from the region.  Psychosexual tension based around issues of class?  Check.  Spooky older backstabbing ladies?  Yes, indeed-y.  Ridiculously over the top endings that still kind of work due to their sheer audacity?  You betcha.

There are moments in Sang-soo Im's (The President's Last Bang) film that don't work.  Many of the salacious sex scenes have a straight from late night cable feel that reduce the impact of the impeccable design on display in much of the film.  And the meddling mother-in-law poised as an Iago-esque adviser pushes the tone of the melodrama past the breaking point at times.  But, all in all, you could do a lot worse than to include The Housemaid as part of your PIFF experience.

The Housemaid plays at the Broadway Theater on Feb. 18th at 8:15pm.  An additional screening is scheduled at Cinemagic on Feb. 19th at 8:45pm.

Portland International Film Festival Preview day 2: THE FIRST BEAUTIFUL THING & INCENDIES

Tuesday's press screenings paired two features involving adult children dwelling on the past history of their mothers.  Despite sharing interests in maternal themes, the films were strikingly different in tone.

The first film of the day came in the form of a sweet Italian melodrama.  Paolo Virzi's The First Beautiful Thing is a highly formal romp through the distant and messy past of a now much older and recently hospitalized woman.  Her son Bruno, a once promising poet turned teacher, has fallen into depression, drugs and drink, blaming his failures on painful memories of an unhappy childhood.  When the news of his mother's hospitalization brings him to her hospital bedside, he is forced to confront both the circumstances of his upbringing and the present state of his mother's health.
 

Refreshingly, the film doesn't try to exonerate the mother for either her poor parenting skills or the endless parade of unscrupulous men in whose beds she fell.  Bruno's remembrances of what he and his sister had to endure while in their mother's care are treated as objective renderings of their living conditions at the time.  These memories review and inspire some rather hilarious sequences in both the past and the present, such as when Bruno confesses being overcome by a feeling of emptiness and then attempts to fill it by ransacking his mother's home for any available intoxicants.

Overall, though, the film felt like a rather rote, by-the-numbers production, simply giving us what we've come to expect from this lighthearted genre of Italian film.  Everything is exceptionally pretty but none of the characterizations carry much weight--and that goes double for the predictable manner in which the story unfolds.  I left this early screening feeling more catered to than challenged, which is quite the opposite of why I usually go to the movies.  Still, I'm positive that many people will be amply satisfied by this meal.

The First Beautiful Thing plays at 8:45pm on Feb. 11th at the Broadway Theater.  There will be additional showings at the Broadway on Feb. 13th at 7:30pm and Feb. 16th at 6pm.

Next up was Incendies from Canada, the Academy Award-nominated film by director Denis Villeneuve (Maelstrom).

When Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) dies, she leaves behind a will that stipulates that her children can only mark her grave if they carry out one last task for their mother's sake.  The mission involves the delivery of two sealed envelopes--one to a brother they never knew existed and another to the father they assumed was dead--in present day Lebanon.  The story deftly intertwines this journey with a harrowing retelling of their mother's life during the civil war of the 1970s

This is big, (capital "I") important storytelling that often teeters towards excess, without fully tumbling into the abyss of the sensationalistic.  Given what the final 15 minutes of the film hold for the viewer, this is quite a feat indeed.

Incendies plays at 8:30pm on Feb. 11th at the Whitsell Auditorium.  There will be an additional showing at the Broadway Theater at 4:15pm on Feb. 13th.