07/09/2022 - VENICE 2022: An overly classical directorial style weakens Gianni Amelio’s biopic about a scandalous “duress” lawsuit in Italy in 1968

Luigi Lo Cascio in Lord of the Ants

“His crime was his weakness, an intentional weakness which rejected any form of authority”, Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote in his regard. A poet, visual artist and playwright, Aldo Braibanti found himself, in 1968, at the centre of a sensational court case, accused of a non-existent crime, “duress”, which had been provided for in the Fascist penal code and was still a feature of Republican Italy’s law at that time (“Whoever exerts his power on another person so as to reduce them to a state of total subjugation”).

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Just like Oscar Wilde, prosecuted a century earlier for “gross public indecency”, this heretical and incoherent intellectual - a former partisan and former leader of the Italian Communist Party, interested in the social organisation of ants - is “above all else” homosexual, an intolerable difference in the eyes of the social order at this time, but one which can’t be prosecuted as a crime. And when the highly Catholic parents of 24-year-old Giovanni, with whom Braibanti is living, report the poet to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Rome for having physically and psychologically subjugated their son, an enquiry is opened, culminating in the arrest of the “nasty maestro” and a trial which mobilises the likes of Umberto Eco, Alberto Moravia, Elsa Morante, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Piergiorgio Bellocchio and Cesare Zavattini. At the time, film director Gianni Amelio was 23 years old. He’d just arrived in Rome, and he attended one of the court hearings with other members of the public. He realised that a character assassination such as this could happen to anyone, himself included. Fifty years later, Amelio is bringing Lord of the Ants [+see also:
trailer
interview: Gianni Amelio
film profile] - a biopic and loose dramatization revolving around the Emilia-born intellectual who passed away in 2014 - to the Official Competition of the 79^th Venice Film Festival.

Narratively speaking, the film (penned by the director alongside Edoardo Petti and Federico Fava) is divided into three parts. In the first, Amelio introduces us to this meek yet charismatic man, played by Luigi Lo Cascio, who recites his poetry to a young and adoring Giovanni (known as Ettore in the film and played by newcomer Leonardo Maltese) whom he met in an art laboratory initiated by Braibanti in Piacenza. The pair soon settle in Rome where the poet introduces his companion to the capital’s gay artistic scene, involving harmless parties characterised by cross-dressing. The youngster’s mother and brother soon materialise, taking Goivanni away by force and locking him up in a psychiatric hospital.

The third section covers the court case. Despite the dozens of rounds of electro-shock therapy which the “victim” of duress has been subjected to, the latter appears in court to testify that he freely and knowingly chose to embark upon a relationship with Braibanti. It’s actually a youngster with whom Braibanti had a brief relationship several years earlier who testifies against the poet. Meanwhile, a journalist from the Unità newspaper (Elio Germano) is following the case, increasingly conscious of the injustice which is playing out in the court room.

Gianni Amelio – who revealed his homosexuality in 2014, at 69 years of age, while presenting his documentary Felice chi è diverso [+see also:
trailer
film profile] in Berlin – couldn’t help but identify with the intellectual targeted in the name of public decency, or feel the need to recall a prime example of a witch hunt (which was also very well recounted by Carmen Giardina and Massimiliano Palmese in their 2020 documentary, moreover). But Amelio’s directorial approach is overly classical, and it struggles to convey the stylistic registers expected by the new generations to whom the film’s themes and lessons are presumably addressed. Indeed, the movie’s slow-paced editing and impossibly long shots, not to mention its excessive emphasis on acting performances, nuances, atmospheres and reckonings (the hypocrisy of the Italian Communist Party when faced with the court case, the homophobic Calabrian character…) are all now so dated they might easily be lost on viewers who haven’t lived through those times.

Lord of the Ants is produced by Kavac Films, IBC Movie and Tenderstories alongside RAI Cinema. International distribution is entrusted to The Match Factory.

(Translated from Italian)

Photogallery 06/09/2022: Venice 2022 - Lord of the Ants

21 pictures available. Swipe left or right to see them all.

{0} of {1}

Gianni Amelio, Elio Germano, Luigi Lo Cascio, Leonardo Maltese, Caterina Antonacci, Sara Serraiocco
© 2022 Dario Caruso for Cineuropa - @studio.photo.dar, Dario Caruso