Two films are worth recommending in SIFF’s New Italian Cinema
Festival: one because it is actually good, the other because it has
cultural value. The one that is actually good is
Fortapàsc, which is based on a real story about a
journalist who was murdered in 1985 for investigating local mobsters.
The film has a strong cast, an excellent pace, some really startling
moments, fluid photography, and great uses of bad ’80s music and
clothes.
The other film, which has cultural value, is called Ex. On
its surface, the movie is a comedy (and often a funny comedy) about
relationships that broke prematurely or without real consideration or
thought or work. Set in Rome, the film juggles these relationships,
each related to the others in a direct and indirect way. In the end,
all the relationships meet their truth. That is the surface. The deep
part of this film concerns the director’s attempt to build a kind of
morality for the amoral global age. All of the characters in the movie
are members of the global consumerist culture. They speak English
easily, have good jobs, live in comfortable apartments, communicate
with the latest technologies. This class space, however, makes it easy
for them to be independent, to go where they want to go, to fuck
whomever they want to fuck. The director wants his subjects to have
none of this freedom. His plot forces them to renounce their freedom
and accept the confinement of their relationships. Indeed, one
character in the film gives up a glamorous, living lover and returns to
the grave of his dead wife—seriously, he does this. Ex is Hollywood for Italians. SIFF Cinema, Thurs—Sat, various
times. 
