monasterace

When I was asked to watch this movie and write a review I was a little half hearted. It was a debut for the director, the lead actress and also the lead actor, even if not at his debut, was in his first main role. To my surprise, the movie revealed itself as a masterpiece. Got everything you may need to enjoy great cinema: it is well written, very well acted, telling us about the contradictions of the city of Rome suburbs. But most enjoyable of all, has references to Pasolini's cinema sowed everywhere in the movie: violence, drama and sense of guilty. We also enjoyed the clear reference to Jean Vigo's "L'Atalante" in the ocean bath scene at Lido di Ostia (another of Pasolini's landmarks). I just wished this movie had a better distribution, because it truly deserves to be counted between the best debut movies of the decade.

The similarities with the American TV series are embarrassing, I am surprised only one of the above reviews has mentioned it.

The director should have put the TV series in the credits!

This film sounds like a Spanish version of the first season of True Detective, as two moustached cops are investigating a bunch of murder-rapes of young women in a rice paddies area in north of Spain (Andalucía).

Like in True detective season the little town is surrounded by wetlands of corruption and insanity.

Even the supernatural - magic elements are copied.

The story is highly predictable and conventional.

The difference - beside the Country - is the period: here we are in 1980, with Spain in transition between fascism and democracy - with the characters deeply involved in the change.

The director his trying is best to hide the similarities - like the use of drone shot.

But even the finale remind us of the series True detective first season

Enjoyable though - just like the series.

Last Saturday I went to see "Anime nere" at the London Film Festival with great expectation. In fact in August I had read a very positive review on La Repubblica newspaper. I must say it met completely my expectations, the movie is very well done, convincing and the light, the light is absolutely sublime. I like all the actors performances. The director told us, after the projection, that they were a mix of professional and not professional ones (very difficult to distinguish for the high quality of their performances). The plot is very intense, but not in a bad way. The most disturbing scenes are not shown on screen, but left to the audience imagination. The movie is set in a rural village in Calabria, south of Italy, where the three brothers were born and where Luciano, the elder, is still living with his family. The two younger brothers, instead, had moved to Milan in the north of Italy few years back.

Highly recommended, a potential candidate to next year foreign Grammy awards!!