massimo_saidel

An absolute fan while growing up in Italy of low budget, scary and extremely stylized GIALLO thrillers (Dario Argento's "Profondo Rosso" & "Suspiria"; Sergio Martino; Lucio Fulci & co), I didn't know this crafty and passionate french film couple, Bruno Forzani & Hélène Cattet, entirely devoted to directing homages of the Genre. Their last opus in competition in Berlin and winner at Tribeca 2025, is a mezmerizing and complex achievement worth discovering. It made me look up their other gem "The Strange Color of your Body's Tears" (2013, released in the US), with 2 more pics to watch (from 2009 & 2017).

The film is an original cocktail of spy, suspense, slasher, romance and kinetic visuals, at times akin to experimental cinema and visual art.

The dosage is high on shiny colours, néo-pop atmospheres, shards, skin masks, split screens and carefully researched vintage italian musical hits. The special FX (by Brussel's Studio l'Equipe) are surprisingly good, especially when it comes to wounds and latex: they don't reek of CGI and deserve a European Film Award next year. Like the overall unknown cast including belgian Yannick Renier (the older brother of french star Jérémie Renier), and 1960's comeback hero FABIO TESTI (the first "Django") who once reined over B-Movies together with Franco Nero and Giuliano Gemma. The speedy grand finale (no spoilers!) still allows the older and elegant Testi (born in 1941) an apt melancholy ending, and a frameshot possibly inspired by...Visconti's "Death in Venice", just to give another idea of how many ideas and ecclectic references our 2 happy helmers can handle in 1hour and 27 minutes.

Reason why I don't understand the bored or dismissive other User's reviews (Wes Anderson's latest miss, "The Phoenician Scheme", has a far more convoluted and tedious plot); surely all the film and key comix references (well known by Q. Tarantino) are exquisitely euro~trash: mainly DIABOLIK, the still going strong comic book based on the ruthless masked killer-robber etched in 1962 by the "in" Giussani sisters of Milan, and made into 3 Blah italo film-sequels by the unininspired Manetti Brothers (2019-22). And even avoiding intellectualizing while reviewing, "REFLECTIONS IN A DEAD DIAMOND" is just that: as much flash and action as a Reflection on time and memory failing us, fading from our life, the real one and the one we share on screen.

(PS: to sum the landmarks of the genre & its current heirs: "Neo-Giallo: A Beginner's Guide", article by Isaac Feldberg in PASTE Magazine & online/14-9-2021)

FUORI, the latest work of growing neapolitan director MARIO MARTONE ("Leopardi"; "The King of Laughter" 2021; "Nostalgia" 2022 and a lasting career in both film & theatre) was overlooked at the last Cannes Film Festival, even if it features an excellent subdued performance -that could have earned her a Palme d'Or- by equally growing actress since "Hotshots", "Respiro" (2010), VALERIA GOLINO (1965) now also a keen director of "Honey" (2013), "Euphoria" (2018) and "THE ART OF JOY" (2025): the latter, produced as a highly rated mini-Tv serie of 6 episodes for Sky which just scooped up the biggest number of italian Donatello awards, is the adaptation of maverick sicilian writer-translator-actress-rebel GOGLIARDA SAPIENZA's (1924-1996) litterary masterpiece, discovered posthumously and revered in France, Spain or England as much as Elena Ferrante's "MY BRILLIANT FRIEND".

"FUORI" (meaning OUT) is set the summer of 1980 in new, often unseen, sometime seedy sun drenched (DOP: Paolo Carnera) and tourist-free parts of Rome, still an intellectual capital at the end of the economical boom, despite heroine, tense politics and the threat of terrorist Red Brigades: only a few years before the Lehman crisis and the irreversible cultural decline of Italy since... The story unspools before and after Gogliarda's brief jailing in an all female (much like the film) prison for stealing jewels from a socialite friend: inside she bonds with all sorts of women outcasts (top young thesp Matilda De Angelis, who reminds us of past italian stars Lea Massari and Francesca Neri; sculptoral newcomer popstar Elodie) who become close friends and will inspire a future bestseller. After the minor scandal, GOGLIARDA SAPIENZA (Valeria Golino), a silent but intense and sincerely unconventional observer, is shunned by her former circle, and adopted by her favourite jailbirds, which she'll prefer forever: "Life in jail was freer than outside, eventhough these women always leave their core inside".

MARIO MARTONE's discreet, more naturalist style now lies light years away from fellow neapolitan diva-director Paolo SORRENTINO, and yet "FUORI" is in my opinion a succesful "reverse" of "The great beauty" (LA GRANDE BELLEZZA).

Unjustly panned in Cannes by Variety, the film opened strong in Italy this week. The US trade magazine called it "obscure and local". That review raised only 1 useful question: can this poetic piece that captures on screen the soul of a poet, Gogliarda, travel? My answer is a resolute Si (Yes!), so long as you stretch your antennas and take this trip as a personal voyage and not as a Hollywood or Sundance ride.

I readily confess (no need for lie detector's, as in the film) that I'm a sucker for Spy & Spooks' flicks: from Fleming to Le Carré adaptations, Ipcress to Jason Bourne...I sleepwalked into "BLACK BAG" (the inside codeword for "top secret-no comment") late after work, barely registering it was the latest Steven Soderbergh's opus: had I known this, maybe I would have chosen not to buy that ticket, or on the contrary eagerly watched the movie differently? At face value, I admit being disappointed: it's british and stylish on a lower budget than usual Hollywood, it's fast talking and there's neat tailoring hanging on thesps, though less fabric and meat than in "Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy" or any Bond. To start with, the chemistry (a key element of the plot, like in "Mr and Mrs Smith") between Fassbender & Blanchett is nil: here's a minimalist under-player, a screen chameleon unique in his genre, who you may not even recognize from one role to the other, modeled on Michael Caine's 1965 iconic Harry Palmer minus the humour, while Blanchett's last memorable performance was "Blue Jasmine" (2012), or 3 years ago flashing in Cannes a Jean Paul Gaultier's skirt with an inside lining made of a huge palestinian flag. Some hazardous plastic surgery since has unnaturally pushed her lips and cheekbones forward, waxing over facial expressions and even losing the legendary smile and twinkle in her eyes...Other actors do their best, notably Tom Burke (as the only sanguine likable character) plus gf Marisa Abela (Amy Winehouse) in the only amusing turn as a kinky childish vengeful smart intelligence operator: what we learn about MI15 from this pic where everyone toils as spy or potential traitor, is that "Birds of the same feather flock together", and also f--ck together (that, with few exceptions like icy boss Pierce Brosnan, is also a key point). So without unveiling spoilers, you surmise there aren't that many original twists under this wrap. The wannabe over clever plot by David "Indiana Jones" Koepp ends up feeling contrived. Or maybe it's the 'classic' whodunnit setup, complete with two dinner parties where everyone is suspected and only one is unmasked, that feels old fashioned and déjà vu? To be honest, there's a threatened scheme named Severus at "the heart of the intrigue", which offers without ever naming it, a radical alternative to the Ukrainian standoff...A far cry from Soderbergh's innovative "Contagion" (when he announced his retirement) or "Sex Lies and Videotapes", 52 films ago. That's right, fifty-two-feature-films (& series) delivered to the silver screen as Steven -not Spielberg- Soderbergh is no small feat, deserving of some Respect.