Le sourire de ma mère

Marco Bellocchio is a voice in the Italian cinema that has been present for about four decades now; he is still going strong. Like a good wine, Mr. Bellocchio gets better with the passage of time. His latest film to get a commercial run is "Ora di religione". This is a complex movie worth taking a look at it, as it presents us a different input on how the director, who also wrote the screen play, views religion, and the Catholic Church in general.

Italy is a supposedly Catholic country. Like the rest of Europe, Italy is going through a change in the way the Catholic Church exerts its influences in everything. More and more, people are asking about what they were taught as children and the realities of modern life where science explains mysteries that were not questioned before.

If you haven't seen the film, perhaps you should stop reading here.

Mr. Bellocchio decides to take a look at the issue of sainthood and its ramifications, as it affects a bourgeois family in turmoil. The Picciafuoccos come from a family of five sons. Egido, has killed his mother, who is being considered for canonization because someone claims he has been cured of a horrible fatal disease by praying to the matriarch of the family.

At the center of the story we find Ernesto, the artist son. He becomes concerned when Irene, his estranged wife, tells him about a change in their young son, Leonardo. This boy has become obsessed with the dogma being taught to him in his school. In his young mind, Leonardo can't differentiate between reality and what he has learned. Thus, he feels about talking to God, because he's everywhere.

Ernesto learns about the possibility of his mother being declared a saint by a cardinal who wants to interview the family and clarify an aspect of her death. The machinery has been set in motion. Ernesto realizes with horror how the family is affected by the news. Ernesto gets to realize what each brother, as well as his aunts, stand to benefit when his late mother be declared officially a saint. The wheels of commercialism have been set in motion and they will not stop the personal ambitions from each one in the family.

In Sergio Castellitto, the director has found the perfect actor to play Ernesto. Mr. Castellitto has demonstrated he is one of the best actors of the moment, as well as an excellent director. He gives an amazing performance as Ernesto, the son that questions his family's motives as well as what he sees in that society.

The ensemble cast is wonderful. The film is dark. It kept reminding this viewer of some of the best films of the Italian classic cinema without imitating any style at all. Mr. Bellocchio is an original who has his own voice. He questions a lot of things that most of us have taken for granted, but are unresolved in the prodigious mind of Marco Bellocchio.

Eventually!!!!! That was a GOOD movie! Clever, subtle, absolutely not offensive (for anybody with a minimum intelligence), somehow delicate even! Sergio Castellito is extremely good in here and carries around this very complex character who tries to be simply COHERENT. Yes, the whole movie is COHERENT. "Coherence" and "smile" could be the main words describing this movie. Grotesque and caricature dance happily around the main character, dragging him down an impredictable spiral of absurd events, started by the almost insignificant spark of a knock on the door. The only negative thing are the two main actresses, Ernesto's wife and lover, who are really lousy. But on the overall the movie is excellent, and very well directed too!

L'ora di religione is not a beautiful movie in any sense of the word. It is dark, the shadows and lights of Rome are matched by the moody vision of the director. Bellocchio plays with images Fellini style, but doesn't focus so much on the caricature in 8 & 1/2 style, but tries to convey the ambiguity of contemporary religious life. It's the ambiguity of modernity; cell phones versus pictures of the saints, the feared "immaginette" Italian kids grew up with. Nothing can change, but so much has changed. Bellocchio's movie style is ripe with symbols: a fat Jesus crosses the road with a plastic cross. Priests in the Vatican force african kids to climb stairs on their knees: the church is portrayed to exploit the same old mother load: the poor, the weak, the ignorant, the child. At some point Ernesto, the main character masterfully played by Castellitto finds himself involved in an incongruous duel with a symbol of a past so remote it appears comical: he loses the duel instantly as the swords cross. Nothing can change. Yet we can maybe hope to keep our identity, and even if god's pervasive presence deprives us of freedom, as Ernesto's son is taught, falling in love, shouting a blasphemous curse can be an act of individuality. Or maybe not.

Ernesto Picciafuoco is a painter and illustrator of children's books, separated from his wife and father of the boy Leonardo, to whom he is very close. One day he receives a visit from the mysterious Don Pugni who informs him that the church has for the past three years been considering the canonisation his mother, who was murdered by his mentally unstable brother many years before. He is profoundly shocked by this news, not merely because he has been kept in the dark by his family, but also because it contrasts violently with his bohemian lifestyle as an artist, free man and an atheist. The memory of his mother forces him to come to terms with the past and also to change the way he thinks about his present life.

Trapped between the church on the one hand, which is determined to establish the truth of his mother's alleged martyrdom, and his brothers on the other, each in one way or another defeated by life and determined to re-establish the lost honour and respectability of the family, Ernesto presents them with his only mode of defence: his own mother's ironic and detached smile, the smile of a woman he has always considered "passive, simply stupid, and even a little cold". He is constantly on the move, thrown between family get-togethers, an interview with the cardinal Don Piumini, an illogical and anachronistic duel at sunrise with the eccentric Count Bulla to whom honour is everything (and once again it is his mother's wry smile that betrays Ernesto's true feelings), and a meeting with a mysterious and beautiful young woman who may or may not be his son's R.E. teacher; a woman to whom the door to his atelier is curiously always open.

Initially, I was worried that I wouldn't understand the issues dealt with in the film, as they are specifically Italian in nature. Thus the "vittoriano" monument in Rome, detested by the vast majority of the Italian population is a recurrent symbol in the film, as is obviously the theme of sanctification and the papacy as a whole, coupled with the debate about the fascist past and the royal family (in exile since the end of the Second World War). However, I loved the film, because it is not truly about these specific aspects of Italian culture and society; rather it uses these to probe deeper into the human psyche. Obviously the theme of religion plays an important role (incidentally, I don't at all agree with the English translation of the title, the Religion Hour, which means nothing: it should much rather have been translated as "Religious Education" or something of the sort, in order even to come close to the Italian double sense of Leonardo's class at school as well as his father Ernesto's sudden obligation to confront the issue), but it is not about the Catholic religion as such, but rather a more personal faith. In Ernesto's case, this faith turns out not to be in God, but in the love of a woman.

It is to a large extent a very strange film (Bellocchio himself has described it as a "very bizarre detective story"). The duel with Count Bulla, Ernesto's threefold betrayal by his mother's smile (the subtitle of the film), and the unexplained significance of the "vittoriano" monument are all very difficult to understand, but this impact of the film in undeniable, and although any concrete message that the film might be trying to deliver remains opaque, the ultimate point is for the individual viewer to extract some personal significance from the film and to think about some of the themes presented -- I went to see the film in the evening and spent the entire following day thinking about it; how often can you claim that about a film?

The strong performances by the cast and the interesting array of characters coupled with the dreamlike and at times surreal images make for a beautiful, at times magical (such as the wonderful scene at the end when Ernesto chases Diana around his flat), and always intriguing. Beautiful: 10/10

Marco Bellocchio's new movie, `L'ora di religione,' has one of the more peculiar premises in cinematic history: an artist and illustrator (I'm afraid he's a movie artist, whose work and life are rather vaguely and glamorously sketched in) learns that his recently deceased mother, whom he thought a bore and a fool, has been proposed by the rest of his family for sainthood, and has a good chance of getting it, and the Vatican wants to ask him a few questions about her death. The artist is stupefied and so are we. Whether we are fascinated and intrigued is another question. The other family members behind the canonization project have enough pretension and influence to want more of what they've already got, and the idea is that the secondhand publicity they'll receive through having a beatified mom will add to their social, political, and financial success. Ernesto Picciafuoco, the artist, is not only appalled by this new development, but also troubled by the simultaneous discovery of his own young son's apparent burgeoning religiosity. What follows is a meandering investigation of the two situations. Ernesto (Sergio Castellitto) looks a little like Dustin Hoffman but with more `there' there. He has to have presence and intelligence to be at the center of an examination of religion that is as complicated, quirky, and provocative as the one that occupies `L'ora di religione.' Castellitto's naturalness and humanity do a lot to make the risk of such a weird premise pay off. His scenes with Gigio Alberti as Ettore, his little son, are absolutely charming and young Alberti is wonderfully spontaneous and real.

If only the other family relationships were as natural and made as much sense. For me the movie fails to come together, partly, I admit, because the Catholic church has never been a big concern of mine, and partly because of flaws in the screenplay and the style that make the story even harder to follow than it would be anyway. Every role other than Ernesto's and Ettore's is more or less a cameo. There are complicated theological disputes that are suddenly broken off by surreal fantasies. (Bellocchio wavors back and forth between satirical realism and obscurantist hyperrealism, and the combination doesn't work well here.) There is the too-perfect and too-beautiful Diana Sereni (Chiara Conti), the teacher of Ettore's `ora di religione' (religion class), who has apparently inspired Ettore's precocious religious crisis and whom Ernesto promptly falls in love with at their first meeting. Instead of a dubious influence as seemed at first, she eventually appears to be a better candidate for sainthood than mom, just on the basis of the magical glow around her face when she's onscreen. Ernesto, with Castellitto's able assistance, despite the odd premise and the shaky plot development, continues to retain some degree of three-dimensionality throughout, but the others tend to the stereotypical. The artist's estranged wife pops up every so often only to help Ernesto take young Ettore to school, a scene that recurs with tiresome repetitiveness.

The Vatican `investigation' that draws in Ernesto aims to discover whether a brother, currently incarcerated, murdered their mother in her sleep, or, as a new rumor has it, whether the mother was awake and forgave her son for doing her in. A favorable answer to this question might tip the scale for mom from the merely super-nice into the saintly category, or from the saintly into the canonizable. Unfortunately this whole issue also strained my credulity far beyond its capacity. Ernesto's bizarre interview on this topic with a Cardinal, Don Piumini (Maurizio Donadoni) in what appears to be a Vatican dining hall for poor and disabled people, is memorable if only for Piumini's stylized manner and strong presence. (One concrete thing I learned from this movie is that Italian Catholic clerics wear the latest chic eyeglasses.)

Equally bizarre is a gathering of rightwing ideologues led by a certain Count Bulla, who challenges Ernesto to a duel. What century are we in? Bellocchio's movie is outrageously personal. In America we'd call it self-indulgent; but he's Italian and this movie is serious and intellectual enough to have been the only Italian entry at Cannes. There is a waste of skill and talent here. This is a gifted filmmaker, and these are excellent actors, and this is material of potentially enormous importance to the audience (if not to me). For some it will all work. It will seem tremendously original and thought provoking. For others it will be cause for head shaking and rueful remarks about what ever happened to the great Italian cinema of those wonderful twenty years of cultural flowering in Italy after the end of World War II. Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini, Visconti, Antonioni: where are you now when we need you?