CANNES Truffle hounds of rare vintage Europop will be delighted to discover David Bowies Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola. This 1969 Italian redo of Space Oddity is featured prominently on the soundtrack of Me and You, its lyrics seemingly tailor-made to fit the searching, solitary boy at the films center. But that musical nugget, sadly, is among the more tangible pleasures of Bernardo Bertoluccis attenuated consideration of the turmoil of youth, his first feature in almost a decade.
The 20th century maestros best films, like The Conformist, pack layers of psychological, sociopolitical, sexual and emotional complexity that make them still riveting today. Bertoluccis health issues have drastically reduced his mobility in recent years, leaving him plagued by chronic pain and largely dependent on a wheelchair. Its a testament to his strength of will that he was able to make another movie at all, and the small scale and concentration in one primary location of this project clearly were planned to make the shoot as physically manageable as possible.
PHOTOS: Cannes Film Festival: Veterans Ready to Return to the Croisette
The directors first Italian-language feature in 30 years, Me and You recalls two of his relatively recent chamber pieces neither of them among his best work. It evokes the claustrophobic confinement of Besieged and the observation of adolescent affectation in a hermetic world of The Dreamers.
The screenplay was adapted from the novel of the same title (originally Io e Te) by Italian author Niccolo Ammaniti, best known internationally for the more dramatically robust 2003 Gabriele Salvatores feature, Im Not Scared. But based on the evidence of whats onscreen here, this book seems more like a protracted short story; it remains stubbornly literary, precious and thin in the hands of co-writers Ammaniti, Umberto Contarello, Francesca Marciano and Bertolucci.
Perhaps suggesting how he sees his role these days, Bertolucci introduces the main character of 14-year-old Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori) finishing up a session with his wheelchair-bound psychotherapist (Pippo Delbono). Something of an outsider at high school, Lorenzos antisocial behavior is hinted at in the smothering concerns of his mother (an insufferably strained Sonia Bergamasco). She is thrilled that he has agreed to go on a week-long school ski trip, hoping it will draw him out of his shell.
Pocketing the money for the trip, he spends it instead on provisions, faking his departure and holing up alone in the basement of the familys apartment building with music, books, an ant farm and an active fantasy life for entertainment. But when his heroin-addicted older half-sister Olivia (Tea Falco) crashes into his hideout needing a place to go cold turkey, his carefully planned isolation is destroyed.
Their days and nights of shared clandestine confinement yield an uninvolving chronicle of clashes, confessions, flirtation and growing closeness. With scant incident, the encounter inches toward the mutual pact that Olivia will stop hiding from reality in drugs if Lorenzo will just stop hiding from the world, period. The issues of neither character are explored with great depth, though making Olivia a visual artist with a photographic series titled I Am a Wall is really clobbering us over the head.
PHOTOS: Cannes 2012: Competition Lineup Features 'Cosmopolis,' 'Moonrise Kingdom,' 'Killing Them Softly'
A lot of banality gets passed off here as profound thought. That and the somewhat self-conscious actors make it difficult to engage much with either character.
Themes of class have often surfaced in Bertoluccis work, and there are glimmers of them in the half-siblings unseen father having ditched Olivias mother, a flashy shoe-saleswoman from southern Catania, in favor of the more bourgeois Roman model of Lorenzos mother. The debris of the impoverished aristocracy also fills the basement in the possessions of a now-deceased countess from whom their father bought the apartment for a fraction of its worth. But none of this musters much heft in whats pretty much an apolitical film.
Bertolucci remains an elegant craftsman. The crisp definition and textured lighting of Fabio Cianchettis cinematography, as well as Jean Rabasses resourceful production design lend visual life and density to the confined setting. And Franco Piersantis fretful, scratchy string score is interspersed to good effect with tracks by The Cure, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Arcade Fire, as well as both versions of the aforementioned Bowie song.
As rewarding as it would be, however, to report that Bertolucci has returned with a meaningful work, the inescapable impression here is of a film with little of significance to add to the much-traveled cinematic roads of youthful solitude and confusion.
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition)
Production companies: Fiction, Mario Gianani, Wildside, in association with Medusa Film
Cast: Jacopo Olmo Antinori, Tea Falco, Sonia Bergamasco, Veronica Lazar, Rommaso Ragno, Pippo Delbono
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Screenwriters: Niccolo Ammaniti, Umberto Contarello, Francesca Marciano, Bernardo Bertolucci, based on Ammanitis novel, Io e Te
Producer: Mario Gianani
Director of photography: Fabio Cianchetti
Production designer: Jean Rabasse
Music: Franco Piersanti
Costume designer: Metka Kosak
Editor: Jacopo Quadri
Sales: Hanway Films
No rating, 97 minutes
0 comments:
Post a Comment