Le metteur en scène de mariages

There is something that one of the characters (the aging film director who pretends to be dead) says which may summarize all the film: "In Italy it's the dead who rule". True! This is a country without a future, in the hands of old and jaded men. And Bellocchio's cryptic portrait of the country, pivoted on the apparently senseless story of a director who has to film marriage parties to earn a living, manages to say a lot about what is not working here. But foreigners may miss the point, as it's not clearly expressed. I understand that Australian or Canadian people who watch this may get bored and wonder if there's a meaning--well, there's a meaning, but it's clear only to people who live here today, and keep their eyes wide open... like Bellocchio. Surely it's not one of his best films, and it's not as powerful as Buongiorno, notte, but it's worth seeing... for Italians who live in Italy.

The film made no sense to me whatsoever. Good actors(SergioCastellittoaparticular favourite; he was great in "Uomo DelleStelle"/"TheStarmaker"but that was made by Giuseppe Tornatore, a great Italian director as opposed to the mediocre one who made this effort),but awful, rambling script, terrible editing,and a director who seemed to have no idea of what he was trying to say, and ended up saying exactly nothing. Apretentious load of rubbish, but the sort of film that certain Italianpseudo-intellectuals whom it was my misfortune to have known in the dim and distant past would have loved it, and unfortunately Italy has no monopoly on these, they can be found everywhere and probably acclaim this as a great masterpiece. I never thought much of Bellochio as director. I remember seeing his first film "PugniNella Tasca"/"Fists in the Pocket" (or some such title) in Rome when it was first shown close on 50 years ago (I was living thereat the time). All the usual pseudos raved about it, but it left me pretty cold. I didn't think he was much of a director then, and still don't. Age has certainly not improved him, and this film must rank as one of his worst.

An esteemed filmmaker goes quietly on the lamb after his assistant jokingly makes inappropriate remarks to a woman he thinks is an actress waiting for an audition, implicating the director in a sex-scandal. While hiding out in a small town he has his arm twisted by a local prince into making a film of his daughter's impending wedding.

This film has a lot on its mind about the current state of film-making, not much of it pleasant. Beneath the labyrinthine story levels lies an angry satire of an industry that reduces artistic directors to no more than metaphoric wedding film makers, and a society that rewards death over excellence when considering person's worth. These are only two of the many themes that expand to fathers and daughters, masculine identity, power games, even the old 'nature of art vs. reality' debate.

Even when baffling with it's magical realism and surrealist touches it's never less than engaging. This is the kind of film that begs you to come back for a 2nd viewing, and you look forward to it.

If Sicily is a territory of the baroque, with its doubling of perspective, that's part of this movie's challenge to realism. And it's an exuberant pleasure here, outdoing Fellini with not one but three film directors, plus of course the actual Bellocchio, who has made some really great movies and shouldn't be touchy about his honor. There is a variety of takes and casting improvisations on Manzoni's "I promessi sposi" with, somewhere there, actual marriage. Sicily is also taken to be a territory of skulduggery (You already know this version of the island, so there's no spoiler involved), a comic version of which makes the picture worth seeing for Sergio Castellito's work with guard dogs on the floor of the great hall of a palazzo.

I checked this out at the Vancouver International Film Festival and was not impressed.

The only area of the film I enjoyed was the commentary on film-making. For the most part, this film seemed random and somewhat fantastical (I don't say that in a complimentary way, however) and just silly. It was as if he was mixing fantasy with everyday life, which may sounds intriguing in some films, but the fantasy merely seemed needlessly perverse.

My criticism of this film is not upon the actors, rather the story itself. I found it boring and narcissistic. I wanted my money back, but considering it was a Film Festival, that wasn't about to happen.