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Cocteau all'italiana, Les Enfants Terribles one year following Prima della Rivoluzione. (Bertolucci returns the compliment in Luna.) The "uncivilized hamlet" of a provincial villa, the scene is a family dinner, the cat prowls unattended across the table while siblings play footsie. The blind mother (Liliana Gerace) asks to be read to, the teenage hellion (Lou Castel) obliges by coming up with scabrous newspaper headlines: "Son kills mother for making him take a bath." Little brother (Pier Luigi Troglio) embodies feeble-minded inbreeding, sister (Paola Pitagora) smooches her reflection in the bathroom mirror, big brother (Marino Masè) stands for callous, sententious "normalcy." The adolescent agitator is easily distracted, his plan to drive the whole clan off a precipice yields to the thrill of a joyride. Matricide on the edge of the abyss, feet up on the coffin, heirlooms merrily tossed out the window and into the bonfire. "This house was never as lively as it is now—for a funeral." Vehemence of youth and comedy of entropy, Marco Bellocchio's magnificent cinematic seizure. "Restless, all mixed up," a maelstrom of impulses churning in Castel's forehead, "un volcano di idee." (From exultant pirouette to agonized tantrum, a jagged psyche reflected in the dynamically impressionistic mise en scène.) Rabbits in cages and rodents for target practice, the old Tricolore thrown to the ground to make room for the new constellation. Welcome blasphemy, cf. Losey's The Servant, Pasolini is just over the rise with Teorema. Brando pinned to the bedroom wall and Verdi blaring out of the Victrola, the runt of the litter lifeless in the bottom of the bathtub, a nudge is all it takes. "Homo homini lupus," chatter for a boring party set to Ennio Morricone's mocking lullabies. It builds to a jolt in a freeze-frame, aftershocks are felt in curious places, New York City (Fingers) or the Hollywood Hills (Love Streams) or Xenia, Ohio (Gummo). Cinematography by Alberto Marrama. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |