ICFF 2016 (The Italian Contemporary Film Festival)

The Italian Contemporary Film Festival has become among the most important Italian film festivals in the world.  The ICFF takes place every June during Ontario’s “Italian Heritage Month.” and includes 9 Days and Nights of cutting edge Italian film & culture.

The ICFF named one of the Top 10 Film Festivals in North America Industry Events with internationally acclaimed filmmakers and producers North American premieres and Italian‐Canadian independent films, Q&A sessions with filmmakers, actors and academics and

Glamorous Opening and Closing Galas at Roy Thomson Hall and The Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Your film reviewer will be present at both opening and closing night parties.  He is also on the jury to pick the BEST FILM of the festival.  This is his 3rd year on the jury.

The festival is presented in a variety of Canadian cities including: Toronto, Vaughan, Niagara, Hamilton, Montreal and Quebec City.

Nine days to celebrate the brilliance of Italian contemporary cinema and filmmakers from all over the world.  Nine days to explore Italian contemporary cinema and discover the cultural richness of Italian heritage.  Nine days to experience the influence of Italian film, culture, fashion and design.

Using the power of the moving image to both entertain and educate, ICFF defies conventional perspectives on complex and challenging issues facing both the Italian and the global communities. All films are in Italian or other foreign languages subtitled in English (and French in the Province of Quebec)

CAPSULE REVIEWS OF SELECTED FILMS:

ALASKA (Italy/France 2014) ***1/2

Directed by Claudio Cupellini

ALASKA begins in the halls of a grand hotel in Paris, where Fausto and Nadine (Elio Germano and Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey) meet for the first time. Fausto , an Italian is a waiter while Nadine is a beautiful young French girl, there to appear in modelling auditions, against her will. When the two meet they fall in love but their love is strung with obstacles.  Basically a romantic comedy/drama with more drama, Fautso is jailed at the start.  When he is let out, two get back together in what could also be called a toxic relationship.  They are also both crazy and very lonely people deep inside.  This is not the first romantic film about a dysfunctional couple.  The recent Hollywood film MR. RIGHT dealt with a similar crazy couple, a girl who falls for a hit-man.  MR. RIGHT was dead awful.  Fortunately ALASKA gets things totally right.  Must be the romantic blood in the Italians.  Director Cupellini creates two characters that audiences care for, crazy though they may be.  It is hard not to root for underdogs whose only dream in life is to find love and to do better. Fausto finally achieves his dream and attains money with the opening of the nightclub called ALASKA.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7bA-KltnBI 

THE COMPLEXITY OF HAPPINESS (La felicità è un sistema complesso) (Italy 2015)  **

Directed by Gianni Zanasi

This is a film about the strangest profession in the business world.  Enrico Giusti (Valerio Mastrandrea) works the task of befriending incompetent individuals who happen to own companies and then convincing them to sell out thus preventing the failure of the businesses and the loss of thousands of jobs.  But his latest venture involving Filippo and Camilla, two siblings aged 18 and 13, who become orphans when their entrepreneur parents lose their lives turns out too much.  Things are made worse with the arrival of his brother’s foreign girlfriend.  The film is too predictable in where it is heading.  Director Zanasi cannot decide whether to go of comedy or drama with the result of a quite boring film with incidents (like Enrico jumping into a pool) making little sense.  Making a film is obviously a complex business for Zanasi.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/146098448

DON’T BE BAD (Non essere cattivo) (Italy 2015) *****

Directed by Claudio Caligari

The film is set in 1995 in the seaside town of Ostia, where Pasolini gave life to his characters in his movies.  The protagonists in this story are Cesare (Luca Marinelli) and Vittorio (Silvia D’Amico) two small time drug pushers trying to earn some some money for various purposes.  This is the drug scene, prior to crystal meth and GHB, accurately portrayed in the film with the use of music (and songs like Be My Lover) and drugs like coke and ecstasy (so true when the characters scrutinize the different stamps on the pills).  Cesare is completely crazy.  Vittorio falls in love with a girl who convinces him to go straight.  So he gets a job brick laying (what else do Italians do?) and tries to get Cesare to do the same.  Trouble is that it is impossible to break bad habits.  Through all this, director Caligari gets his audience to root for his characters.  Crazy as Cesare is, he has a niece dying of aids that he needs money to pay for her medication.   This film is deeply emotional in the way the characters try their best to escape a drug crazed lifestyle.  Marinelli who is also in MY NAME IS JEEP plays another crazed character, (also in the Oscar Italian winner Best Foreign Film THE GREAT BEAUTY) and is a star to watch!  My pick as the Best Film of the Festival.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1p-ulARNHc

MIA MADRE (MY MOTHER) (Italy/France 2015) ****
Directed by Nanni Moretti

Nanni Moretti is a well-known Italian film director who has won prizes before at Cannes.  Known for his apparently simple looking but nevertheless complex films, Moretti has seldom failed to impress.  His latest film , MY MOTHER inspired  by the recent death of his mother is one of his best works.  He plays Giovanni, the brother of the protagonist, a female film director Margherita (Margherita Buy) whose socially relevant film is as disturbing to her as her personal problems which include her separation, daughter and dying mother in hospital.  Margherita’s problems likely express the director’s own difficulties in life.  If all these sound too serious, humour is provided by the entrance of Margherita’s new actor John Turturro playing a loud obnoxious character whose name, Barry Huggins is as absurd as his behaviour.  But the best parts of the film are the segments where Moretti captures life’s finest moments despite the distractions.  “Why are you being so capricious?” Margherita asks her mother at one point in the hospital.  “Because it is fun,” is the reply.  Margherita Buy, excellent in the lead role delivers a Best Actress performance.   She does not have to resort to shouting or overacting to make a point – her face is good enough to reflect all the despair and worry of her character.  A beautiful film that succeeds in manny levels!  While other films teach one how to enjoy life, MIA MADRE teaches one on life itself.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOa_A48vPLs

QUO VADO? (ITALY 2016) ****

Directed by Gennaro Nunziante

QUO VADO?  begins with the hero of the story, Checco (Checco Valdone) as a child asked what he wants to be when he grows up.  While his classmates mention respectable positions such as a surgeon or scientist, Checco picks ‘permanent position’.  A permanent position or posto fisso is a public servant job, like one in Canada in which pay, benefits, pension and lifetime employment are practically guaranteed.  Checco eventually earns one and is pleased as hell.  But things are too good to be true.  A reformist government changes this and Checco is offered a cheque as severance to be laid off.  As a result of refusing, he is sent off to far off postings so that he will eventually give in.  One of these is in Norway where he falls in love with Valeria.   QUO VADO? works so well because it makes fun of Italian mores while finally respecting them for all it is worth at the end.  Italy is looked upon as a rude and uncultured country compared to Norway.  But Checco like all Italians love their shouting, queues, flight delays and other inconveniences.  Director Nunnziante blends all these into a zany comedy aided by a superb comedic performance by Checco Zaldone.  Zaldone is sort of a clown, but a more level headed sexier Roberto Beligni who gets his girl.   Though QUO VADO? is politically incorrect at times, especially in the scenes with African natives, it is still quite funny.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvzgHb2rrrA (in Italian)

THEY CALL ME JEEG (LO CHIAMAVANO JEEG ROBOT) (ITALY 2015) ***1/2
Directed by Gabriele Mainetti

The film plays like a more realistic Italian version o the action super anti-hero movie DEADPOOL.  The pornography-watching hero is a friendless thug who after falling into the toxic Tiber River develops self-healing and super strength powers.  The only person who believes in him is a young crazy lady who believes his is the video game hero Jeeg.  That video game is very popular in Italy so non-Italians might miss the film’s inside jokes.  The girl wants to be the video game’s princess and Jeeg promises to buy her the princess dress.  All this is made crazier with a not the crazy character by the name of Gypsy played by Luca Marinelli who also appears in DON’T BE BAD, ICFF’s best film of the series.  If all these antics sound crazy, director Mainetti actually pulls all this off in a rather heart-felt entertaining little action drama.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/153906155

USTICA (THE MISSING PAPER) (Italy 2015) ***

Directed by Renzo Martinelli

“People that don’t mind their own business are looking for trouble.” That is the warning given to private helicopter pilot Valja (Lubna Azabal) when she searches for the truth of the downing of a commercial plane.   On June 27th 1980 a DC9 belonging to the private Italian airline ITAVIA disappears from the radar screens, crashing between the islands of Ponza and Ustica.  81 persons died.  The hypotheses on the disappearance of the DC9 are three: structural failure, a bomb in the rear toilet of the plane, or an air-to-air missile which struck the civil aircraft by mistake during a battle between unidentified military fighters.  Roberta Bellodi, a Sicilian journalist who lost her daughter on that night and Corrado di Acquaformosa, a Deputy in the Italian Parliament, member of the Commission set up to throw light on the crash of DC 9 entangling themselves in a labyrinth of cover-ups, disappearance of proofs and key witnesses. The film has the message that one has to go about doing the right thing, no matter the consequences.  The film uses over-sentiment to get the message through.  Bring Kleenex!  The film is also very, very funny, the best part being the confrontation between the Deputy and his mentor.  Unfortunately, the humour is unintentionally funny.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7J3P_zQezo

by Gilbert Seah