L'amico di famiglia (2006)
The Family Friend (2006) [Artificial Eye]
A Film by Paolo Sorrentino
DVD9 | ISO | PAL 16:9 | 01:39:03 | 7,85 Gb
Audio: Italian AC3 5.1/2.0 @ 448/192 Kbps | Subs: English
Genre: Drama | Italy, France
A Film by Paolo Sorrentino
DVD9 | ISO | PAL 16:9 | 01:39:03 | 7,85 Gb
Audio: Italian AC3 5.1/2.0 @ 448/192 Kbps | Subs: English
Genre: Drama | Italy, France
A usurer, ugly, filthy, rich and tight-fisted, cynical and ironic. He has a sick and obsessional relation with everything: his mother, his father, money, women. Life itself. That's why he thinks he's lonely.
But in fact he is not alone.
IMDB
This film is also part of 'The Paolo Sorrentino Collection'
One of the unexpected high points of my 2005 cinema-going was Paolo Sorrentino's The Consequences of Love (Le Conseguenze dell'amore). It's not that I wasn't expecting it to be good – we'd booked the 35mm print for a cinema screening on the basis of the reviews alone, despite the DVD already being available – it's just that I wasn't expecting it to be THAT good. The story revolves around a middle-aged Italian named Titta Di Girolamo, who has spent ten years in the same Swiss hotel occupying the same seat for his meals and waiting for who knows what – it may sound the stuff of minimalist drama, but Sorrentino's handling is instantly beguiling and the friendship that develops between Titta and a young, attractive hotel barmaid changes everything for the character and the film itself. If you haven't seen it then it comes heartily recommended – it's available on UK DVD courtesy of Artificial Eye, and it's they who have also brought to DVD Sorrentino's latest and equally captivating work, The Family Friend (L'Amico di famiglia).
L'amico di famiglia (2006)
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While Titta Di Girolamo was emotionally cold but quietly intriguing, the character at the centre of The Family Friend is defined largely by his sleazy self-interest – on my regularly updated list of characters who don't have to be likeable to be interesting, Geremia De Geremei must sit somewhere near the top. A diminutive weasel of a man, Geremia is a money lender who likes to believe that he is good-hearted – he appears fond of the doubtless self-created nickname, Geremia Heart-of-Gold – but if you're struggling with your loan payments then this modern-day Shylock will have his pound of flesh, possibly in sexual favours from your wife or daughter. He spends precious little of the money he makes on himself, sharing his dark, threadbare and leaky abode with his ailing and housebound mother, while his miserly greed is such that in spite of his income he will happily steal goods from a supermarket and then take a single sweet to the checkout and demand a discount on his loyalty card. His more unsavoury attributes are summed up about a third of the way in when he is described to a prospective customer as "short-tempered, stingy, fake, vengeful, talkative. And extremely hideous. He smells foul, he sweats profusely."
L'amico di famiglia (2006)
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But to reiterate the point above, Geremia may not be likeable, but he most definitely IS interesting. As played by Giacomo Rizzo, whom director Sorrentino uncharitably (and perhaps jokingly) describes in the accompanying interview as "the ugliest actor in Italy, or one of the ugliest," he has all the charm of a lizard that keeps trying to crawl up your trouser leg, but as a screen character is perversely compelling. This really is a case of the actor finding the inner humanity of a man who on the surface appears to have none, and his moments of realisation and sadness for his own life register beyond the obvious pleasure of a seeing a harsh lesson learned by the deserving.
L'amico di famiglia (2006)
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The pursuit of money is not just Geremia's obsession, it is his only doorway to human contact outside of his home. The nearest he has to a friend, the easy-going, cowboy-dressing, Country and Western obsessed Gino, is actually his assistant, a man whose task it is to investigate potential borrowers and gently lean on them if they misplace Geremia's trust or fail to make payments. Geremia likes to get personally involved with his clients, to become the 'family friend' of the title. He is, the character who provided that unflattering description above informs us, "there when you need him, but also when you don't." But his interest in the preparations for the wedding of beautiful young Rosalba, funded by a loan her proud father can ill afford, are more personal. Bewitched by Rosalba's beauty, Geremia uses a chance event on the wedding day to take advantage of her, and a deal is struck to reduce her father's loan repayments at considerable cost to her dignity. But Geremia is not the only one captivated by Rosalba, and could it be that she actually has genuine feelings for this unpleasant lecher?
L'amico di famiglia (2006)
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There's an obvious Beauty and the Beast element to the central narrative, but the texturing, sub-stories and character detail ensure that this is just one ingredient in a deliciously rich brew. Other figures that enter the story may or may not have a bearing on the turns Geremia's life and work could take, from the man hoping to buy a title to secure a deal with the Vatican ("I don't trust the Vatican," Geremia tells him, "or God") to the business consortium looking for a million Euro loan to upgrade their hotel chain ahead of their competitors, a deal that seems designed to engineer Geremia's downfall.
L'amico di famiglia (2006)
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The pace is upped from The Consequences of Love, with Luca Bigazzi's energetic and smoothly mobile camera, plus a consistently gorgeous use of light and the scope frame, making the most of some arresting minimalist architecture (one of the few good things to come out of fascism, the director informs us) and is joined at the hip to a seductively and sometimes hauntingly employed source music soundtrack. Sorrentino's love of Fellini films is evident in the sometimes surrealistic comedy and effortlessly dream-like asides, although two of the most memorable – a small army of citizens carrying chairs down a main road and the three centurions walking the night streets of Rome – turn out to have logical explanations, something I cannot provide for the extraordinary opening shot involving a nun buried up to her neck in sand.
L'amico di famiglia (2006)
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To call The Family Friend a quirky delight does it a disservice, because it's a richer, more finely tuned and more complex work than that accurate but simplistic summing-up suggests. There's enough to delight cineastes in the handling alone, with almost every shot having is own compositional beauty, while the consistently effective union of film and music is an object lesson in how to use source tracks without turning your film into an extended music video. But so much comes down to the central character and Giacomo Rizzo's compelling performance, from his confidence of his own world view to his comically hurried shuffle and the swing of his ever-present plastic carrier bag. Rizzo inhabits the character and makes him real, a core of truth within the stylisation – he may not be easily likeable, but you do, in spite of everything, feel for his fate.
L'amico di famiglia (2006)
Special Features:
- Director interview
- 'Making Of' documentary
- Behind the Scenes featurette
- Deleted & alternative scenes
- Filmographies, stills gallery & trailers
L'amico di famiglia (2006)
Many Thanks to jamescain.
No More Mirrors.