Cannes. L'Amico di Famiglia.

"Handsomely filmed, in a rich style that enhances both the comedy and the pathos, A Friend of the Family is the best film in the current Cannes session," declares Time's Richard Corliss. "To me, [Paolo] Sorrentino is the young hope of Italian cinema. He doesn't turn 36 until next Wednesday, and I couldn't imagine a happier or better deserved birthday present than a Palme d'Or."

Eric J Lyman talks with Sorrentino for the Hollywood Reporter.

Updated through 5/28.

Fabien Lemercier at Cineuropa: "A post-modern, rock & roll homage to Fellini, the 35-year-old Neapolitan director’s new masterpiece is a real gem of his tragicomic style that has mesmerised audiences."

But the Hollywood Reporter's Ray Bennett calls it "a murky and morally dubious film... A misogynistic male fantasy that presents a bleak view of life in Italy, the movie argues that ugliness is beautiful, beauty is ugly and greed consumes everyone."

Time Out's Geoff Andrew: "Some find [Sorrentino's] technique flashy or his narrative needlessly fragmented; go with it, however, and at the very least you're left with a clutch of intriguing questions and some of the most memorable images produced by the Festival."

Updates, 5/26: Mike D'Angelo at Nerve: "I can't think of another movie so doggedly determined to dazzle you with each and every shot - the film opens with an eye-popping attention-grabber, cuts from there to an image that could comfortably nestle itself into one of Matthew Barney's cinesculptures, then moves on to a credits sequence that plays like the most demented soft-drink commercial ever made... if the cumulative result can be a trifle exhausting, that doesn't change the fact that I watched a lot of The Family Friend with a big goofy smile plastered on my face."

"Like the futurist artist Giorgio de Chirico, Sorrentino limns a sparsely populated world of stark architecture in which figures form a structural, depersonalized element that's equally architectural," writes Variety's Jay Weissberg, evidently suddenly realizing he's leaving France in a day or two and hasn't checked out a single museum yet. "Really a surrealist," he continues, "Sorrentino uses realism and minimalism to achieve his aims, and, with a painter's eye, he tries to capture the iconic moment, be it of pleasure or pain."

Update, 5/27: Salon's Andrew O'Hehir: "Giacomo Rizzo gives an unforgettable if not precisely enjoyable performance."

Updates, 5/28: Jonathan Romney in the Independent: "I can't begin to say how crazy and inspired this film is... a sometimes baffling narrative of corruption, exploitation and sexual betrayal. Visually and narratively, it's popping with ideas."

Cineuropa's Fabien Lemercier interviews Sorrentino.

Posted by dwhudson at May 25, 2006 7:21 AM