QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM VENICE
Seventy-seven-year-old Sicilian director Franco Maresco – with a filmography of nearly 100 television and theatrical films over the course of four decades – is an extremely well-known and much cherished artist in his native Italy. His work is immediately recognised by his compatriots, however few of his films received international distribution (a quick IMDB search reveals that the majpority of them do not even have an English title). The director does not enjoy the same level of international fame. His latest creation is a tribute to late poet, film director and screenwriter Carmelo Bene, who also happens to be relatively obscure outside Italy.
Bravo Bene! is a metatextual comedy. In other words: it is built up the notion of the film-within-the-film. Maresco plays himself, as does the rest of his cast and crew: writer Umberto Cantone, producer Marco Alessi, and many others. The director is determined to film a biopic of Bene (who passed away in 2002, and appears in some archive footage), but his greedy producer Andrea Occhipinti keeps threatening to pull the rug. Cantone steps in in order to lend a hand. An investigation reveals that filmmaking is a dirty and chaotic experience. Peter Greenaway’s idea that “cinema is dead” is repeated ad infinitum. It doesn’t feel very prophetic. In reality, it is the desire to finish the motion picture by hook or by crook that prevails. Even if that takes a little hand from God, here represented by a convulsing local priest.
Maresco’s biggest nemesis is producer Occhipinti, for whom Maresco expresses the most shocking – even unspeakable – sentiments. The man does not appear in front of the camera. Occhipinti indeed signs the film production). Maybe he was unprepared to swallow so much vitriol. And he isn’t Maresco’s only foe. The Italian director describes film critic Francesco Puma as “one of the most idiotic people I’ve ever met”. Unlike Occhipinti, Puma is an integral member of the cast.
The idea of putting your very crew in front of the camera in a piece of autofiction is an interesting and courageous one. it is common for the crew to actively participate in documentaries, but this is an entirely different story (Bravo Bene! is a carefully scripted movie endeavour). The director here is helpless and vulnerable, hardly able to inspire confidence. In this sense, Bravo Bene! is an ode to self-deprecation. The double meaning of the Italian title is an ironic confirmation of this: Un Film Fatto Per Bene means both “a.film made for [Carmelo] Bene” and “a well-made film” – the on-screen developments are the antithesis of good practice!
This 108-minute movie boasts a vast array of film languages, media and textures, with a notable a taste for wizardry and audacity. Images of the film-within-the-film and of the director and crew on set are combined with archive footage of Bene and television excerpts to kaleidoscopic results. The images alternate between vibrant colour, sharp black-and-white and washed-out vintage throughout the entirety of the flick. Bravo Bene! repeatedly alludes to a vast number of Italian television and film personalities, eliciting loud laughter from those familiar with people and cultural references, and a colder and more indifferent reaction from foreigners like me (my knowledge of Maresco’s filmography and Italian television is as flat and thin as pizza).
The movie does contain the occasional element of more universal humour: the staging of the chess match in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957) collapses after one of the players confesses he doesn’t know the rules of the game; or a desperate actor desperately seeks relaxation over the act of defecation, only for his concentration-intense labour to be repeatedly interrupted by the frenzied director and crew. But that isn’t enough to engage international viewers throughout. As a result Bravo Bene! is a highly esoteric product, aimed almost exclusively at its national audience.
Bravo Bene! just premiered in the Official Competition of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival.
