Uma Vida Tranquila

This was a lot more than what I bargained for in a late Saturday night, searching for a decent crime film to watch. ''Una Vita Tranquilla'' is a wonderful, slow-burning character study, pondering on familial relationships, more specifically the father-son bonding and the problem of emotional communication between them. Toni Servillio gives once more a spectacular performance as the veteran mafioso from Naples who sought and found refuge in Germany, now living with his wife and 9-year old son and owning a restaurant. When he gets a visit in Germany from his son and a friend of his, the protagonist will embark once again on a journey that 15 years ago sworn that he would never do again. The pace is slow, but at no time the movie gets tedious or uninteresting as it is the development of characters and the good dialogue that compensate for a not particularly rich plot. Apart from Toni Servillo, the rest of the cast does a terrific and the same goes for Gergely Pohárnok the person behind the magnificent cinematography of the film. As a result, ''Una Vita Tranquilla'' is one of the best psychological/crime European films of the last years.

A tough subject, dealing with a former killer member of the Camorra, who left for Germany to build a new identity and has to come to terms, after 15 yeas, with his past, on the background of a still actual emergency in Italy, that of rubbish in Naples: a difficult subject to handle, but solidly handled. The director proceeds with a highly controlled and steady direction, made up of sequence-shots, close-ups: this, together with clear-cut and sharp characters and essential dialogues contribute to an overall solid rendering of the drama, without parting with some increasing tension. Intensity gradually increases, indeed, supported by a tense narrative rhythm, probably partly ruined by the unlikely final slackening. Toni Servillo, awarded as best actor at the latest Rome film festival, makes a substantial difference, being his main role fit for him: his performance is truly great, intense, perfectly able to render the inner drama of a man trying to overcome a painful past, which will never abandon him.

For a crime drama this movie is pretty uneventful and not very dramatic. It features Toni Servillo as Rosario/Antonio, a reformed assassin linked to the Camorra who escaped to Germany and rebuilt his life as a restaurant owner and family man (German wife, one son).

In the synopsis he's mentioned as having killed 32 people (???), but this number is never mentioned in the movie. However, Rosario does confess to having been an assassin to the dying priest of his German congregation.

Rosario's quiet life is shattered by the arrival of his older son Diego with an accomplice, both of them following Rosario's path in the criminal career. The dialogue in the movie is sparse and the parts in dialect nearly incomprehensible without subtitles.

Servillo is constantly praised as a good actor, but for me he is expressionless and all his performances are very similar. In this movie again, he plays a hardened man of a few words, whose only emotion is mild contempt. Could have been a better movie with a different lead and better dialogue.

Saw it with Jet lag, just because it was playing at the right time at the small indie theater next to where I stay in Paris (and I do not know how widely released in the US). Gripping to say the least. After all the bubble gum US movies of this past summer (2011), A Quiet Life came to me as a totally amazing surprise. With no cheap thrill, very little camera effects, the plot progresses so slowly but so intensely, revealing only bit by bit, and often quite subtly and obliquely,layers and layers of deep human drama. About the mafia yes. But about bad choices that seem reversible but... about deep relationship between father(s) and son(s), about estranged brothers, about loyalty, trust, resentment, appearances and deeply ingrained feelings, protection and self protection, and all types of love. The sociological background that raises (again subtly) questions around multi language/cultural environment, border crossing, immigration adds to the already complex psychological web, although I wonder if some of it may not be lost in translation (and in subtitles)-- For me: as deeply moving as the Godfather. Yes.