Quo Vadis, Baby? (2005)

“Quo vadis, baby?” is a quote from Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. And that quote refers to the title of a famous American movie from the 50’s. Quote after quote – not just in the dialogues but also in images and music – Gabriele Salvatores (Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film with Mediterraneo in 1991) accomplishes an act of love for cinema.

An act of love for films, and for filming in general. The director uses different shooting techniques for the scenes set in the present – cold, bluish digital images – and the scenes from the past – home movies from childhood. And the story, somehow, unfolds around a mysterious videotape.

Giorgia, the lead protagonist, is a detective without a gun, but she shoots at the people she investigates with a camera. As she points the camera, she wounds. And a camera turned on her own life hurts as much as a bullet.

So, filming, shooting, the camera eye as something that can affect our reality. The film even suggests that films can hide the answers to our questions. Twice the protagonist says “I don’t like films” or “I don’t go to the movies”, and twice the answers to the questions she’s asking are hidden in two films.

The story has cinema as its background. Of the main characters, one is an actress, the other a director and cinema professor. The professor’s house is homage to cinema, with posters of cult movies scattered all over, and on the wall a huge painting of a half-empty smoky movie theatre, like the ones where the history of cinema was made.

The plot doesn’t unfold in chronological or logical order. It’s rather like a private investigation. Just like a private detective, the audience starts off knowing nothing. They are given scattered clues, flashes of knowledge, which the audience is asked to recompose like a puzzle. The story is constructed from inside by the viewer, who takes active part in the making of this noir.

Even music becomes a point of view of what is happening. The soundtrack made by four saxophones, a piano and a cello – recorded at the Philip Glass’ Looking Glass Studios in NY – belongs to the dark, noir world of the film, to the blue of the movie.

As a character in the films says of herself, Salvatores sees “pure cinema inside” of him. And he becomes it.

A noir of the soul so to say. That's how I would define Salvatores' latest movie. I loved the character of Giorgia, that non-politically correct 40 years old lady who smokes, drinks, is single and tries to live through her past and fears. She's a private investigator and her hardest task is to investigate into the suicide of her sister Ada, 16 years earlier. Salvatores enters the heart of both women and let us see their dreams, fears and lies around the death of one of them. Angela Baraldi (Giorgia) is particularly brilliant and astonishing. You can't take your eyes off of her. The atmosphere is very intense and that is emphasized by the excellent soundtrack of the movie. Very poignant.
As with DENTI (imo his masterpiece), this movie seems to have been mostly overlooked and largely misunderstood (note the relatively low ratings on IMDb… but since when has IMDb's ratings been representative of good taste?). But if you're a fan of modern surrealism, check it out. (By "modern surrealism", I'm not referring to Buñuel (what I call "absurdist surrealism") but rather Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Tom Tykwer or Jim Jarmusch–directors who create vivid, dreamlike visuals while staying rooted in a rational plot. I'd even include Hitchcock in the list.)

The finished film (obviously, he took the challenge), is a brooding thriller set in Bologna - a city of dark porticoes that seems to have inspired a thousand noir novels (to the extent that writers like Carlo Lucarelli, author of almost blue, have spoken about the Bolognese school ofnoir).

It tells the story of Giorgia, a woman in her 40s, who is still struggling to come to terms with her sister's suicide fifteen years earlier. At the start of the film she receives a number of videos, which turn out to be a form of video diary kept by Ada, her late sister.

It also has a particular narrative structure. It's inward looking, and self-referential. The plot uses references to other films throughout (Quo Vadis, Baby? is a line from Last Tango in Paris). "It's like a puzzle," agrees Salvatores, "that was already in the novel, a puzzle that you solve, like some sort of detective story. The story isn't recounted from start to finish in a chronological sense, but the detective receives a series of clues and it's for him/her, if capable, to close the story and arrive at the truth." Warming to his theme he continues, "This task, in this book is left to the audience: it's the public that will be the investigator, and the audience that will create the story from a series of clues that we throw here and there. In fact, the last piece of the puzzle, the final clue, the one that can close the case, is trusted only to the audience, that is none of the characters in the film know it, or get to see it, other than the audience. We trust the audience in the end."

That Baraldi is a singer, rather than an actress, may have just been a coincidence, but the Director is quick to point out that this is his most 'rock' film. "It's a film full of music [PMF, Talking Heads, Ultravox amongst others], but also because at its heart there's a bit of that rage, that instability, and at the same time those dreams, and the sense of losing yourself that rock has given us. Actually”he says, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “I would have really loved to have been a rock star, rather than a director. Unfortunately the premature loss of hair [points to his youthful but sparse hair style] forced me to give up the idea!".

Cast:
Angela Baraldi - Giorgia Cantini
Gigio Alberti - Andrea Berti
Claudia Zanella - Ada Cantini
Elio Germano - Lucio
Andrea Renzi - Commissario Bruni
Luigi Maria Burruano - Il Capitano

Awards:
Flaiano Film Festival
2005 Won Best Actress Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture - Female
Angela Baraldi

Best Director
Gabriele Salvatores

Best Film Score
Ezio Bosso

Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists
2006 Nominated Silver Ribbon Best Cinematography (Migliore Fotografia)
Italo Petriccione
Also for La febbre (2005).
Best Score (Migliore Musica)
Ezio Bosso

Best Screenplay (Miglior Sceneggiatura)
Gabriele Salvatores
Fabio Scamoni

Best Sound (Miglior Sonore in Presa Diretta)
Mauro Lazzaro

Screencaps:




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