Luna rossa

I was lucky enough to catch this picture during a series on new Italian cinema at the Walter Reade in NYC. There doesn't seem to be an english subbed (or even dubbed) version out there, but keep your eyes peeled because an opportunity to see it should not be wasted.

This picture looks at the long-unraveling lives of a once-powerful mafia clan in Italy. Years of violence, neglect, and the shame of dark secrets such as incest have weakened their familial structure to the breaking point. The weight of this decay falls hardest of the shoulders of the family's new generation, raised to believe they would follow in their ancestors powerful footsteps but instead faced with cleaning up the messes made years before by others.

LUNA ROSSA ("Red Moon") seems on the surface very similar to David Chase's "The Sopranos" - it's about mobsters with mid-life crisises. In fact it is an entirely different, vastly superior animal. Artfully sidestepping the glamorous sheen dramatizations of organized crime have here-to-fore possessed, writer and director Antonio Capuano fills the screen with the despair and degradation of a family legitimately feeling sorry for themselves and those who will come after. It's a bleak film to be sure, but it's so well-leveled with humor and honest performances that it's easy to give yourself up to it for the better part of two hours.

From an aesthetic standpoint the film is equally compelling - characters sulk in and out of blackened halls and rooms as if to hide from each other and themselves, low frequency drones and white noise in the background of every scene up the sense of decay - Capuano makes wonderful use of numerous stylistic touches throughout.

All in all, an excellent film that deserves attention. Seek it out!

i had occasion to talk to the director, antonio capuano, he was invited to my city to discuss his film (on dec 13 2006) and he criticized those American films which show us mafia and camorra as something fascinating, something to imitate because they use famous and handsome actors to interpret mafia bosses and in this way make us feel positive about them. capuano instead intended to create a feeling of disgust, horror, revolt against mafia and camorra and he said that only if we recognized it as something evil and to fight against then we would make a step further to not simply accepting such cancers of our society. so, if other comments say that it was just a series of killing people it is true but it is on purpose. i also want to make evident the incredible mix of the camorra topic with Greek tragedy (orestes) and the interesting mix of language: slang from naples with literary style. so, even if i don't like mafia and camorra films that much it has impressed me positively.