Starring: Marcello Fonte, Eduardo Pesce, and Alida Baldari Calabria
Distributor: Palace Films
Runtime: 103 mins. Reviewed in Sep 2019
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This crime drama was inspired by real events reputed to have occurred in 1988 in Italy. The film won the award for Best Actor at 2018 Cannes Film Festival for Marcello Fonte. It tells the story of a dog-groomer, entirely lacking in self-confidence, who lovingly grooms his four-legged friends.
Marcello (Marcello Fonte) lives alone, visited by his beloved daughter, Alida (Alida Baldari Calabria) in a small, run-down, seedy-looking village on Italy’s southern coastline. The town strongly hints of Mob influence. Marcello divides his time between caring for his 9-year old daughter and working in his dog-grooming salon as a respected worker. He cares deeply for the dogs he looks after, and the town is friendly towards him for that. “Everyone in the village likes me”, he says, “and that matters”. Marcello’s human foibles supply multiple moments in the film that are genuinely comic, and Fonte’s acting combines humour, pathos, and great sadness.
Marcello is being coerced by a violent bully, who is a local thug by the name of Simoncino (Eduardo Pesce). Simone terrorises the whole town community, and regularly beats up the town’s business people for not doing what he wants them to do. To help give his daughter, the holidays she wants, Marcelo sells cocaine to his friends, and Simone demands that he be given the drug on the side, and forces Marcello to do so in the presence of his daughter. Drawn into a world he finds it hard to endure, Marcelo is an unwilling victim of harassment by Simone, who is his worst client. Because of Simone’s influence, he participates in robberies, drug trafficking, and other activities, such as using his dog-van as a get-away car. Marcello resents Simone, but paradoxically wants to be his friend, intrigued by the power that Simone obviously holds over others. Simone represents what the Gomorrah and Mafia offer – power, the promise of protection, friendship and respect at a price, and influence.
Emerging from prison where Marcello does time to protect Simone, Marcello finds he cannot cope any longer when Simone refuses to pay up for protecting him. Simone’s continuing abuse of him, and the town’s withdrawal of friendship for his behaviour, propels him to take matters into his own hands, and pushes him to breaking point. He deals with his problem, brutally. Marcello saw Simone as an untamed wild thing the town didn’t want, and he took matters into his own hands in a drug-induced state to regain their respect.
Matteo Garrone directs the movie unflinchingly. He conveys to the viewer an Italy that is entirely discrepant from its tourist image. The film offers a powerful character study of a criminal in the making. Marcello was once a man no one could dislike, fondly loved by his daughter, and regarded with affection by the whole town, but then things changed.
Marcello’s final act of vengeance demonstrates what can happen when bullying impacts pathologically on a person. The film delves into the tentative relationship between action to gain respect, and antisocial behaviour. It turns a weak good man into a bad man, and it convincingly shows the transformation. This is a story of a man, who learns how to live with his criminality, and it depicts the descent of a human person into depravity. The film starts with an endearing dog lover, and ends with a vengeful killer.
The photography in the movie reflects the grimness of its story-line, and the acting of Marcello Fonte is outstanding. Fonte nails the conflicted heart and soul of a troubled man – one good enough to risk his life to save a dog in distress, yet bad enough to kill a human being no one likes.
The film is a morality tale that comes at a price. This is a piece of cinema, that is brutally aggressive at times. Best known for his gangster movie, “Gomorrah” (2008), the movie’s Director, Matteo Garrone, hasn’t lost his understanding of criminality, and what it can do to people. The film is grim in its set design, photography, lighting, music, and acting, but very impressively so.
Peter W Sheehan is Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and. Broadcasting
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