Two treats from Italy this week. Yesterday a package arrived from Milan from Modo e Modo containing a new Moleskine in replacement for my current notebook with the pages falling out in great chunks. I followed the guidelines on the excellent moleskinerie site, sent in a description of the problem along with photos. Monday I received an apologetic email from Modo e Modo followed by a new notebook yesterday. Very impressed.
Monday I caught Paulo Sorrentino’s new film ‘The Family Friend’ (L’amico di famiglia) in the London Film Festival. Visually very arresting, set in a town of De Chirico arches, fascist state architecture, a landscape made famous by Fellini. There is a scene, a beauty contest, which seems to directly reference the public celebration depicted in ‘Amarcord’. I’ve been in such places, descibed them in an unpublished travelogue. It’s the other side of Il Bel Paese. The foggy flatlands of the Po Delta. A land of small (abusivo) apartments built outside the walls the historic town centres, along streets with broken pavements and the incessant sound of farting Piagio Bravos and cholic kids. A very long way from the sun-drenched olive groves of Chiantishire. Sorrentino’s central character is the kind of person that feeds upon the unhappiness that festers in such places. A grotesque little man of apparently without a heart who refers to himself as Geremio ‘Heart of Gold’, a moneylender, a Shylock, a Fagin. He preys on the poor and the vulnerable and is ultimately undone by hitherto unknown feelings, for woman he has abused, not unlike Zampano (Anthony Quinn’s character) in ‘La Strada’.
Metaphors are laid on metaphors – women playing volleyball in slowmo, a naked girl sleeping in the park, the choosing of ‘le bomboniere’, the gold foil wrapped chocolates that Geremio eats. After an hour totally immersed in this world I found myself strangely unsatisfied at the end despite the retribution meted out to the heatless Geremio. The final chapter seemed to hurry to its conclusion, too keen to provide a simple resolution. It was close to being a great film, it’s a brave adventurous effort that may struggle to find an audience outside the cinephillia of the LFF.
moleskine london film festival