Open Roads. Round 2.

Given the number of movies I watch now, the thrill of discovering something cinematically new occurs rather seldom (the last time was Jaime Rosales's Solitary Fragments from 2007). I just had the experience again, while viewing Salvatore Maira's The Waltz (Valzer).

This thrilling combination of ideas (touching on sports, cosmetic surgery, marketing and control) and an unusual visual notion - it's been done previously in spurts and in at least one full-length film, Russian Ark - is here coupled to a narrative rich in plot and character, past and present. The result is an amazement that, thankfully, becomes much more than mere technical achievement.

If you're familiar with Russian Ark, you will have guessed that The Waltz is another movie composed of a single, continuous shot that comprises the entire, feature-length film. The camera moves from person to person, room to room, inside to outside with nary an edit. So what? In Russian Ark, we were in the Hermitage, looking at all that spectacular art, meeting historical characters, and being led around by a charming, slightly naughty tour guide. In The Waltz, the technical achievement - and it remains quite an achievement - is matched by a grand conception and dialogue that had me hanging on almost every word - listening hard and marveling at the intelligence, irony, cynicism and caring and daring on display.

Writer-director Maira has brought us today's world via the venue of one posh Italian hotel, with guests representing the "haves" and workers the "have-nots." The roving camera gives the film a continuous fluidity - as well as an immediacy - different from what editing might have achieved. It also blends and binds all the characters and plot strands into a seamless, horrible w/hole. The most daring and amazing part of the film, for me, is the manner in which Maira manages to take us into not just the present moment, but the past, too - with his camera still roving. He has performed the cinema equivalent of a stunning coup de théâtre.

The story comes directly and urgently from the characters on view: specifically, a father just released from a South American prison, and the young woman, one of the hotel staff, with whom he has an unusual connection. There is a missing girl, a conference devoted to the idea of first controlling soccer and then an entire populace, the immigrant as work force, and a moment of memorably shocking violence. Don't worry: It's bereft of the torture and gore found in the Saw and Hostel franchises; instead it's Maira's technique that gives the scene such immediacy and force.

Through it all, Maira opens us up to ideas about the meaning of family, blood and the insider/outsider; the connection between service people and the acting profession; and most importantly, how the ideas we hear spouted by a "marketing/psychology" guru have taken their toll on a one young woman who becomes the tragic personification of everything our guru is saying. Amidst the rich and pointed dialogue, there is one moment I wish were gone: a cheap reference to a reality show set inside a concentration camp. Reality shows have long lost their use as satire. But this is such a minor quibble when set against Maira's achievement.

For anyone interested in cinema that expands and experiments while remaining accessible, exciting and even moving, there is no more bracing current example than The Waltz. It screens at the Walter Reade on Sunday, June 8, at noon and Wednesday, June 11 at 4:15 pm.

A love story above all else, but one so grounded in its time and events that it also becomes a film about economics, politics and class-consciousness, Ms F (Signorina Effe) is set during the 1980 factory workers' strike against the automotive behemoth FIAT. An assembly-line worker and a low-level manager set off sparks from which a film rises that should appeal to fans of romance as well as to those who have more of a taste for politics and labor relations.

I am not certain that either audience will be fully satisfied, however, for the film keeps crossing boundaries that are not easily breached. The characters are complex; they switch sides on occasion and screw things up, mostly for themselves. Within a single family, a number of differing attitudes toward this famous strike come to the fore, not to mention the attitude of the interloper who wants to carry off the family's younger, upwardly-mobile daughter. The daughter herself, as attracted as she is to this new love, seems almost equally appalled by her desires - and by the object of them. The disposition of her former boyfriend (who doubles as her boss at the factory) also grows more complex as the movie continues.

The strike and its aftermath helped create the current labor situation in Italy, and I suspect that the movie will be a must-see for those who also catch Francesca Domenici's documentary In the Factory (another Open Roads feature this year) which also addresses the 1980 strike as part of its survey of Italian factory life post-WWII. (Both movies, I believe, use some of the same documentary footage.) Ms F is a short film but it is packed with characters possessed of immense feeling and barely-suppressed rage - toward their situation, toward others, often toward themselves. Director/co-writer Wilma Labate was wise to concentrate on her characters above all: There is enough dissension and drama within the three-generation family shown here, and with the factory worker and his roommate (who begins dating older sister in the family) to fill out this feature - and a few others. Yet Labate keeps her movie from veering into melodrama and she consistently gives everything - management, labor, sex, love, family, friendship - a clear-eyed view and proper respect.

The director is helped enormously by her capable cast. The younger daughter Emma is played by rising Italian actress Valeria Solarino, from this year's The Waltz and last year's Secret Journey. Solarino is among the more beautiful actresses working today. I'm not certain how expansive her range may be, since the three roles in which I've observed her call for characters of limited expression: quiet, reserved, watchful. Within this framework, however, she is quite wonderful, and Filippo Timi as her new paramour is equally good, as open and fiery as Solarino is subdued. Together, these two make memorable lovers. The third side of the triangle is well-played by Fabrizio Gifuni, also seen this year (and from very different angles) in The Sweet and the Bitter and The Girl by the Lake.

The FIAT strike, fleshed out so interestingly in Ms F, was a kind of turning point - downhill - and not just for Italy but for European workers in general. I would guess that the tearing of the societal/familial fabric that the film observes has had long-term consequences. Labate's finale, as close to perfect as any movie ending I have seen since Once, brings the point home with a combination of reticence, pain and tact that will leave viewers, as it does its characters, holding their breath.

Ms F screens at the Walter Reade on Sunday, June 8, at 4pm and Wednesday, June 11, at 6:15 pm.

Something about "a prophet being ignored by his own country" comes to mind, when one considers Carlo Mazzacurati's splendid film The Right Distance (La giusta distanza), which seems to have won not a single award anywhere and yet it is so far superior in every aspect to the multi-award winner, The Girl by the Lake, as to boggle the mind. Its setting is similar - a small Italian town near water - and there are other similarities, which, to protect you from "spoilers," I will not address here. Instead I'll concentrate on why you should stick this little gem on your list.

First off, who is the protagonist here? In fact, there are two, maybe three, and that breaks certain "rules" of dramaturgy. But co-writer (with Doriana Leondeff) and director Mazzacurati breaks them with such ease and generosity that I think you will gladly go where the filmmaker takes you. Perhaps the real hero is the town itself, which is, like so much of the west, going through growing pains as it takes new immigrants into its community.

Journalism, honesty, stalking (in various forms) and love all come into play in this unusual story, and the fact that the lines between right and wrong begin to fudge a little, then a lot, is all to the good. There is such a strong sense of the fullness, the richness of problematic humanity on display throughout this 105-minute film, all of it captured via so many telling details that the movie never for a moment grows uninteresting.

The actors do such a terrific job of bringing their characters to life that I think Mazzacurati and his casting director Jorgelina Depetris Pochintesta deserve particularly high marks. They've cast newcomer Giovanni Capovilla in the pivotal role of the youngster with journalistic tendencies, and Capovilla, naïve and smart in equal doses, surely delivers the goods. Valentina Lodovini and Ahmed Hefiane play, respectively, the town's new school teacher and car repair shop owner, and each brings so much to the film that they finally and necessarily commandeer it. Giuseppe Battiston (again!) is on hand as a pushy shop owner and Fabrizio Bentivoglio brings weight and class to his role as newspaper editor. Every last cast member rings true, as do the events that unfurl leisurely to our delight and dismay.

"The right distance" refers to the space between the journalist and his subject - not too close to intrude personally, but near enough to see and understand. This distance, like so much else in the movie - love, morality, responsibility - changes as necessary. What a fine film this is! The Right Distance screens at the Walter Reade on Sunday, June 8, at 6:15 pm and Tuesday, June 10, at 4:15 pm.

The FSLC's annual round-up of new and/or special Italian films usually offers an interesting documentary or two - and this year is no exception. As fascinating and schizophrenic as was last year's See Naples and Die (Enrico Caria's combination of rah-rah tourism and Mafia-like Camorra exposé, this year's Biùtiful Cauntri [site; Beppe Grillo], written/directed by Esmeralda Calabria, Andrea D'Ambrosio and Peppe Ruggiero, makes that one seem like high tea with your favorite Disney characters.

This 75-minute descent into Italian hell details what has happened to the Campagna region of the country, where currently reside some 1200 illegal toxic dumps. When I interviewed Italian director Daniele Luchetti in March (in advance of the US opening of My Brother Is an Only Child), he mentioned having just seen a very disturbing documentary about illegal dumping of toxic waste in the south of his country - and mentioned it as an example of why he believes that Italians are true anarchists: they simply won't/can't obey the law. Biùtiful Cauntri must have been the film he saw.

Oddly enough, there are no villains to be seen (some are heard via recorded phone calls) but plenty of victims, especially sheep - herds and herds of them - plus the water, everything that grows in the district, and of course, the people who live there. Most of them have lived there since birth, and so did their ancestors. One tired fellow explains that if you were to simply kill someone here, outright, with a gun or knife, you would be arrested. But killing the entire district in this manner that is ongoing produces nothing: no arrests, no stopping of the slow slaughter (it is well into its second - or is it third? - decade), only further "study" of the situation by the powers that be. Clearly organized crime is working with at least some of the politicians and elected officials to enable the illegal dumping.

I suspect that the reaction of many savvy Americans will be shock and disgust, empathy, and perhaps a slight nod to the fact that, as horrific as has been the past 8 years of the Bush administration, even America has not achieved something as despicable on its own soil as what we see here. Little wonder that the investigating fellow we see most often throughout the film keeps hitting the steering wheel of his car, swearing and screaming to himself (and the camera) about the lunacy, the impossibility of it all. This film - and the situation it examines - is frustration writ huge.

Biùtiful Cauntri screens at the Walter Reade Theater on Monday, June 9, at 7:15 pm and Thursday, June 12, at 2 pm.

Much quieter but perhaps no less frustrated are many of the faces and voices that pass through In the Factory (In Fabbrica), the documentary by Francesca Comencini (daughter of Luigi Comencini and director of I Like to Work, which was shown at Open Roads several years ago) that offers us the post-WWII history of the factory in Italy - and the people who have labored within it. The film begins with black-and-white footage from past decades, starting after the Second World War and continuing through the "economic miracle" of the late 50s and early 60s, the student/worker unrest of the late 6os into the 70s (a period that saw the rise of the Red Brigades).

In the 80s, the film switches to color, and soon the color of the workers begins to change, too. Toward the end, more women than men are seen at work, along with a heavily immigrant population. What's most fascinating about this documentary are the visuals of the various decades, along with the comments made by workers protesting, at almost all points along the way, their working conditions. Whether it be the southerners who have come north, only to find no decent accommodations in which to live, or the women who wonder at the men's behavior or at how they are expected to work and raise a family on so little income, the filmmaker allows the people to have their voice, rather than spoon-feeding her viewpoint to us (although in fairness, they are probably one in the same).

Fiat and Alfa Romeo are two of the largest factories featured, and while the documentary sticks mostly to the workers and their attitudes, we can't help but wonder about the men at the controls. We we see little of them, but the inequality between underling and overseer leaves its mark.

In the Factory screens at the Walter Reade Theater Sunday, June 8, at 2:10 pm and Wednesday, June 11, at 2:30 pm.

I'll leave it to others to debate whether Franco Piavoli's Blue Planet (Il Pianeta azzurro) is a documentary film in the strictest sense, an essay or a highly unusual narrative. Beginning with shot after shot of water dripping as snow melts, this is an unusual look at our world from an Italian filmmaker who seems to justifiably cherish the earth above all else. After a few minutes of nothing but water, I began to think I would not last throughout the full hour and a half. But then Piavoli begins to take in plant life, then animal life... Even after all the amazing documentary footage we've seen in the intervening quarter-century since Blue Planet was first screened, Pivoli's eye still amazes. There is one segment showing various copulating animal life (including mankind) that is riveting, as though some alien was recording all this to take back to his home planet. Copulation is followed by one species feasting upon another; the day goes on; man's labor is recorded, too. Then it is night: mealtime, and sleep (with dream/nightmares) and a distanced look at man's unconscious.

When day returns, it seems we're in another season, then autumn folds into winter. Somewhere in here, the soundtrack, which has eschewed any music (other than that of the actual sounds of the world we are watching), is suddenly bursting with a full orchestra. Maybe I get Piavoli's point, but, still, this does not seem necessary. The film ends with a wonderful and appropriate quote from Lucretius.

As Blue Planet is seeing its New York premiere during Open Roads, I suspect you'll want to sample its pleasures. It plays only once at the Walter Reade Theater (Tuesday, June 10, at 6:30 pm), but then opens for a commercial run at Two Boots Pioneer Theater on Friday, June 13, where it will be shown nightly at 7 and 9 pm. In addition, Anthology Film Archives has scheduled an entire series, Celebrating the Earth: The Films of Franco Piavoli, running from June 12 through June 15, including Blue Planet, Nostos: The Return, Voices Through Time and At the First Breath of Wind. Each film runs approximately 90 minutes, and Piavoli himself will appear and answer questions after several of the screenings.

Posted by dwhudson at June 7, 2008 1:58 PM