08/09/2009

The ghost of Luchino Visconti is more present than ever this year on the Lido: this time it has nothing to do with the Hotel Des Bains (and the sumptuous rooms where the director shot Death In Venice). Instead, it is about two Italian directors whose films are, in different ways and perhaps unwittingly, a nod to the creator of The Leopard: one is Luca Guadagnino, whose I Am Love [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Luca Guadagnino - director
film profile] has been seen by many as a homage to Conversation Piece, and the other Marco Filiberti, whose “operatic” opening in David’s Birthday [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (Controcampo) recalls Senso – with Wagner in place of Verdi, and the Pergolesi theatre in Jesi in place of the Fenice – before venturing into the territory of Death In Venice.

Indeed, the life of psychologist Matteo (Massimo Poggio), a loving father married to sweet-natured Francesca (Maria de Medeiros), is disturbed by the arrival of David, the extremely handsome son (played by newcomer and male model Thyago Alves) of a couple of friends (Alessandro Gassman and Michela Cescon). The young man arouses an uncontrollable desire in the protagonist, who until now had been a champion of rationality (he’s a psychologist after all).

When the five live together under the same roof, during one summer in Savoy, things turn out unexpectedly. Or perhaps we should say predictably (but that isn’t a criticism), as Filiberti – on his second film after Little More Than A Year Ago – continues to pursue the genre of modern melodrama, with all the inevitable tragedy it entails.

When it comes to melodrama, however, the film lacks the brilliance that, during the genre’s golden age, captivated viewers of Douglas Sirk’s flamboyant works. It is replaced here by a rather too blatant display of culture (there is mention of Proust, Tristan and Isolde, Schopenhauer): as if melodrama had abandoned its popular roots to address the “(un)fortunate elite” capable of understanding the learned quotations and forays into kitsch (David first appears in a masturbation scene, to the sound of Maledetta Primavera by Loretta Goggi, a gay icon in Italy).

An equally unconvincing aspect of the script – written by Filiberti, who is a far greater director than he is screenwriter or dialogue writer – is the decision to work against the dramatic register (alongside the protagonists, there are two complex figures, one of Matteo’s patients, played by Piera Degli Esposti, and David’s uncle, Christo Jivkov, the only one to guess what is going on) by including an incongruous, Italian-style comedy character played by Gassman, an unapologetic chaser of (young) women, always ready with a joke.

Produced by Agnès Trincal and Caroline Locardi’s Zen Zero, with support from the Evian éQuinoxe screenwriting workshops at the Royal Evian Resort and the Marche Film Commission, David’s Birthday has not yet found an Italian distributor.

(Translated from Italian)