Berlusconi inspires dark humour

Valeria Golino directs Honey.

This year’s Italian film festival has slimmed down everywhere but in the programme, writes Peter Calder

The political bad joke that is Silvio Berlusconi is a rich source for artists in all media, and his shadow can be seen stretching across two films in the upcoming Italian Film Festival.

The two films take radically different approaches to the country's benighted political culture but both seek to argue the same case: that politics is far too serious a business to be left to politicians.

The sardonically named Viva Italy (Viva l'Italia is the name of a political party whose leader is not one bit interested in his country's welfare) introduces a corrupt senator who has a stroke while bedding a young starlet and when he recovers is (horror!) incapable of telling the truth. The set-up, which recalls the Jim Carrey vehicle Liar, Liar, is a none-too-original take on the Holy Fool idea, but it is the basis of an exuberant and fast-paced Italian comedy of the old school.

By contrast, Long Live Freedom (Viva La Liberta) is a more heartfelt, less comedic take on the story (it made me think of the underrated Kevin Kline/Sigourney Weaver White House drama Dave from 1993). The ubiquitous Toni Servillo, who played Giulio Andreotti in the wonderful Il Divo a few festivals back, plays an opposition leader tanking in the polls who (shades of Pope Benedict) makes a sudden decision to bail out of political life.

His minders replace him with his identical twin (also Servillo), who happens to be wildly bipolar. Needless to say, the neophyte newcomer, like Chauncey Gardiner in Being There, sets the political scene on fire by connecting with the people the way a real pollie never could.

The two movies are among 18 that make up the programme of the 19th festival, which is playing at Rialto Newmarket and Berkeley Takapuna from next week before moving on to the three other main centres.

Festival director Tony Lambert has pulled out of the other locations (Nelson, Hawkes Bay, Hamilton and Tauranga) that the festival used to serve, though operators in the first three of those four will incorporate an Italian film season into their programmes.

The opening night galas have had to be cut back too, although in Auckland the Festival Italiano, incorporating a market, food stalls and outdoor entertainment, will occupy a closed-off Osborne St behind the Rialto on Sunday, September 28.

The programme line-up features some meaty dramas as well as lighter, musical fare. Most impressively, actress Valeria Golino, whose electric-blue eyes earned her jobs in Hollywood (she was Tom Cruise's girlfriend in Rain Man and featured in the Hot Shots franchise) as well as at home, makes her feature debut as director with the handsome, thought-provoking and superbly acted Honey.

The title is the working name of Irene (Jasmine Trinca), who runs a lucrative business assisting the terminally ill to take their own lives. But things fall apart when she discovers that a client she has equipped is not ill at all, but simply disenchanted with life.

"Is there a list of acceptable reasons?" the client, a retired architect (Carlo Cecchi) demands when Irene wants to back out. "The sick don't have more rights than me." Thus the film sets up a philosophically tantalising relationship which is made both confronting and deeply moving by the terrific chemistry between the two.

The darkest by far of the titles previewed, Salvo is an intense but very watchable drama about a Mafia assassin (Saleh Bakri from The Band's Visit) who carries out a hit a job only to find that the target has a blind teenage sister in the house with him. The opening 20 minutes or so are among the most knuckle-whitening of the year and the film takes us into some pretty challenging territory as their relationship develops.

Festival preview
What: The 19th Italian Film Festival
When and where: Rialto Newmarket and Berkeley Takapuna
Info: www.italianfilmfestival.co.nz