Mio padre ha 100 anni

To the images of Guy Maddin, Isabella Rossellini plays multiple characters to reflect on the work of her father, filmmaker Roberto Rossellini. Now let me just say that I have no issue with the subject of Roberto Rossellini and indeed at times even this look at it delivered glimmers that made me want to find out more, problem is that they were only glimmers. What the rest of the film does is labour heavily in pretension, bad acting, bad scripts and nothing in the way of image or substance to make it worth seeing.

The narrative is essentially a couple of dialogue scenes that discuss the man, the film industry and his films but all these dialogue scenes are held with Rossellini in all of the different roles (apart from the physical role of her father's belly). Saying it like this makes it sound like it might be OK but trust me that it is not. Most of the dialogue is terrible and it is not helped by the fact that for the majority of her performances Rossellini is terrible – really terrible. Ironically the only parts of it that works are those that are essentially Isabella delivering to-camera like she is being interviewed; why she didn't just do a film where she did talk to camera about her father and intersperse it with other comments and clips of relevance I'm not sure.

Perhaps she wanted something more creative in honour of her father and perhaps this is why her friend Maddin directed. Now unlike many I do mostly like the work of Guy Maddin –weird it may be but it is wonderful at the same time. Here though he seems to do nothing anywhere close to the creativity of his other films that I have seen – in fact if I hadn't seen his name on the credits then I would never have guessed it was one of his. Given how weird his films tend to be perhaps it was Isabella's crass and obvious dialogue scenes that sucked the creativity energy out of him – how can one be imaginative when your actor is saying such obvious drivel? Clearly this is a very personal film to Isabella Rossellini and I can only hope that she can look at it with pride that it does for her everything that she wanted. However for me all I got was the impression of a film made too heavily by a writer too close to the subject and a director seemingly happy to let her have her way. Poor and very disappointing for anyone expecting this to be a "Guy Maddin film" because it really is not.

First off, I don't get the negative reviews here. Sheesh, Isabella shared with us a very small and yet charming, honest and deep glimpse into her relationship with her father, and her father's relationship with film and his two wives.

The film is about 15 minutes, of course no person small or large will fit into such a time, no matter the size of his or her belly. But there are well woven threads in here, wolves that nurture and stalk, profiles of film directors and a plea to move beyond a world split into fear and desire, and soar into "the need to know."

I came to this because my son has a film class with "Stromboli" on the list. So I recently watched that film and in checking IMDB saw the top review by Roberto and Ingrid's grandson, that in turn led me to see his name connected to this wonderful gem from Isabella. And so movies and ancestors live on...

"Stromboli" was only my first Roberto Rossellin film, but I'll look for more. If this was your first Guy Maddin film, I think he is a unique talent, and a great choice for this dreamy paean.

I know Guy Maddin directed this short film, My Dad is 100 Years Old, but either acclaim or blame should be rest on Isabella Rossellini's shoulders for this. She knew what kind of picture this would be, and Maddin seems more like a hired hand here than a true visionary. And if anything, the vision of sorts is really distracting and unnecessary and is just really poorly done. I know the intentions are good, and if I had to rate just on intentions it would be much higher praising, albeit in such personal terms. Roberto Rossellini is a great filmmaker, one of the greatest that emerged once the smoke settled from World War 2 in Europe. And his films Open City and Paisan are films that should be rediscovered for years to come as technology overcomes the film industry (even if it's just in museums). But one of his daughter's, Isabella, hasn't done the greatest of tributes, from my perspective, with her My Dad is 100 Years Old short film.

There isn't really anything coherent to the picture, which might have been acceptable had it been maybe more focused, so to speak. What I mean is the same pretension that she seems to be commenting on (although too little too late by the last shot when she calls for the camera to move in front of her directly in profile), and done with a very 'this is how it is' take on things. She makes fun of Fellini and Hitchcock (the latter in profile, the former played by her), as Rossellini himself- or the form of him as portrayed by a huge belly that Isabella recollects was what she remembers the most- rags on anything in cinema that doesn't address morality and the like. Only when Chaplin comes out- also again Rossellini herself playing her along with David O Selznik- does some praise come out. For a film that lasts only 15-17 minutes, it seems like it fills up its time much too smugly and with an air of content at being all over the place. It's interesting to see how the rest of the picture, with its obtuse camera angles and pompous style of editing and framing and dialog, compares with the few precious clips of Open City that are shown, and how more insight into the director is in those clips than in everything else his daughter shows.

Now, in full disclosure, I do like Isabella Rossellini a lot, as an actress, and she is a beautiful woman, but taking the controls on a complete tribute project like this nears all too much to the point of disaster. We get a view of a man who is simply all alone, out-casted by a film community that once embraced him, and sullen by the fact that people don't care about his movies after a while, or the kinds of stories and characters he wants to portray. It sounds really good on the outset, but it's not what I thought it would be when I finally saw it- a mess. I would have much rather had seen a full-on documentary on the director instead of some avant-garde deconstructionist short film. A big disappointment from a big fan of the director.

I just caught this movie on the documentary channel and I think it was extremely well done. It's been so long since I've seen imagination and art and human emotion properly translated onto film. An insight into the life of Roberto Rossellini through the eyes of his daughter offers of a unique perspective on how the golden age of Hollywood and it's pioneers functioned. Perhaps the over-all message of the film has skewed my personal opinion since I enjoyed it so much, but I do believe that Roberto had a point. That Hollywood was, and still is, too obsessive over box office results and not enough emphasis on creative expression. This short film is worth a watch.

It seems odd the choice of Guy Maddin for the direction of this homage by Isabella Rossellini to her late father, Roberto, one of the great masters of the Italian cinema. Mr. Rossellini was a man who presented the material he wanted to show without gimmickry. Guy Maddin, on the other hand, loves to tell a story using imagery that Rossellini would have probably not approve because the lack of realism in his films.

That said, this short documentary, written by his daughter Isabella, an intelligent actress, presents her father as a figure that was in bed most of the time. Ms. Rossellini's tribute comes in the form of an exchange among the great director and David O. Selznick, Federico Fellini, and Alfred Hitchcock, as these innovators tell Rossellini how their ideas differ in what they consider what cinema should be like. Charlie Chaplin pays a furtive visit, as well as Ms. Rossellini's mother, Ingrid Bergman. When she asks her mother if her father ruined her Hollywood career, she answers, that no, it was she who ruined his.

Isabella Rossellini acts all the parts in this short, but emotive tribute to an innovator who was way ahead of the others and who, unfortunately, was forgotten toward the end of his life. The combination of Ms. Rossellini's writing and Guy Maddin direction serve the documentary well.