Favolacce

Co-directed by brothers Damiano and Fabio D'Innocenzo "Bad Tales" is a dark, downbeat and really rather unpleasant film seriously lacking in the 'feelgood' factor. It's also rather good in a horrible, queasy kind of way; a film to admire for the obvious skill the filmmakers demonstrate but certainly not a film to like. Set during one summer in a suburb ouside Rome it looks, somewhat forensically, at a couple of very dysfunctional families much in the style of Yorgos Lanthimos. The brothers never quite reach the heights that Lanthimos does but we are definitely in the same perverse ballpark.

Both adults and children are treated with the same off-hand cruelty while their actions are never really explained. There's something almost surreal going on here and not in a good way but then the film is called "Bad Tales" so don't say you weren't warned. I doubt if I'll be returning to it anytime soon but while the brothers may not be the Coens I will certainly be interested to see what they do in the future.

"Favolacce" is undoubtably a good movie, thanks to the inspired screenplay, the anxious score, the solid acting and the frustrating direction. And I say frustrating because the D'Innocenzo's brothers intentionally chose the camera angles that were the less adapt to the scenes in order to provoke a sense of discomfort in the viewer. And this discomfort is what the movie leaves after the credits, a general bitterness for what happened in it. The complaint I have, that is the reason why I didn't love it, is the setting. The ultra degraded suburb filled with pessimistic, poor and angry people similar to the one represented in "Dogman" is excessive and distant from the actual reality. And I'm not saying there aren't difficult situations but here is a bit too extreme and I felt a certain detachment from the characters because they really felt fictional to me (maybe the only one that I perceived as plausible is the one played by Elio Germano). And probably it actually was the intention of the filmmakers in order to tell some tales, as the title suggests, but I would have liked it more if the context was more real and then I think that what happens in the movie would have hit me a lot harder than it did. In conclusion "Favolacce" is good, surely a fine watch, but the level of appreciation you will feel is correlated to how much you will buy its setting and its characters.

My personal favorite of the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival and winner of the Berlinale Bear for best script. The film introduces itself as: A true story inspired by a false story. The false story is not very inspired. Sounds mysterious? It better be, for this is a film enjoyed more the less you know. Okay, I'll give you this much: a dark look at life in the subjrbs outside Rome, where people's aspiration clash with reality. The story of a summer broken down into a sequence of immersive scenes, each containing its own drama and driven by an atmosphere of suspense. All is mostly viewed through the eyes of the kids. Highly recommended! On a side note: this is the second film of the D'Innocenzo Brothers that I've seen, and it is astonishing to observe how much they've matured as film makers and story tellers. Their first film - La Terra de'l abbastanza - had all the pieces but lacked a forceful plot to tie them together. Favolacce deliverd this force, in a unique way.

This Italian Swiss TV coproduction with Sky TV won a screenplay award at the Berlin Film Festival. We saw it in a group of cinephiles. In the discussion afterwards we could not find one reason how this could have been possible. Maybe every other film in the contest was written worse, but that is hard to imagine. Maybe the jury wanted to play a practical joke. Even the narrator in the film apologizes for the senslessness and boredom of these random and badly written script. Any of the scenes could have been replaced with any other. It makes no difference. It was sad to witness how the art of film has deteriorated both in the making and in a venue of appreciation that once held some prestige. Nice cinematography though, one star for that and one for casting.

This movie stages action in a domestic and familiar environment, where violence never explodes, because violence is not a disturbance of that social order, but a pillar: it's behind every gesture, every word, every thought, it's something sinister always lurking inside the grownups (in a minor but important scene, during a birthday party the adults say horrible words towards a mother - but in whispers, like if they were haunted).

Parents shows and expose their kids as trophies, not caring for them but for themselves: in another scene a young father is pleased by the driving skills of his own son and proudly screams "You are like me!" - something that the kid is obviously not willing to be. Generations basically ignore each other's feeling: and ignorance is the trigger of silence, silence is the trigger of despair, and despair the trigger of violence.

Thanks to silence, conflict is invisible, and for this reason it becomes eventually inescapable: and the surprising epilogue is the only moment when peace is restored in the families, as the parents for the first time looks like they are actually caring for their children. We hear from the narrator at the beginning that everything in this story is at the same time true and false: and eventually we understand that this mix creates a scaring thing, called reality. This movie is good cinema and great advice, you should see it.