ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL: In an influential culture stretching back thousands of years, the shadow that hangs over every Italian creative artist must weigh heavily. In the case of playwright Alessandro Genovesi, whose film script of his play Happy Family has been adapted by film director Gabriele Salvatores, the strongest influence on his work is clearly Italian absurdist/dramatist Luigi Pirandello.
This glossy, well-directed, production ostensibly is the story of Milano screenwriter Ezo Colanzi (Fabio De Luigi). Ezo introduces us to his life. In a direct-to-camera monologue, Ezo enthuses about his life as a writer. Soon after, Ezo’s characters are demanding their share of our time, looking the audience in the eye as they complain about their lives. This Pirandello-like device will either enthrall or alienate (hey, even its proponents call it a distancing effect), but what it doesn’t do is engage dramatically. Much of the film – particularly the extended introductory sequence – tells rather than shows.
After the characters have been introduced (or rather they have introduced themselves), Happy Family settles into a standard narrative about two families who come to together when their teenage children – the foppish Filippo (Gianmaria Biancuzzi) and rebellious punk princess Marta (Alice Croci) – decide they wish to marry. The story allows some choice scenes (particularly the friendly banter shared by a Marta’s dope smoking father (Diego Abatantuono) and his corporate counterpart Vincenzo (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) in the other family), but much is just boring blather between caricatures.
Unfortunately when the scenario is played out, the script returns to a mode which specifically recalls Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. It may seem too demanding to ask for a modern film to achieve the same impact as an Italian Nobel Prize winner, but to employ the same techniques in either homage or imitation is to invite comparison. Where Pirandello illuminates the arbitrariness of narrative and the thin line between reality and illusion, this film employs similar devices to do little more than pad out an incomplete scenario.
Derivativeness aside, the nadir of proceedings, however, is the caricature of a Chinese massage therapist. Not only is she referred to by the Japanese monicker 'Yoko" (bad joke or racial slur – you decide) but she screeches in a clichéd manner which is clearly supposed to be amusing. It isn’t. Then again much of the film is supposed to be funny but fails.
The title Happy Family of course is ironic. Some viewers may enjoy the whimsical distractions this fractured narrative offers, but on the whole the film audience will not be happy.
