VENICE 2022 Giornate degli Autori
Review: Bentu
- VENICE 2022: Salvatore Mereu presents a story of a deep friendship but also a portrait of the last vestiges of an archaic peasant world
Marked by the sounds of nature that become a true soundtrack, Bentu [+see also:
trailer
interview: Salvatore Mereu
film profile] feeds on a neorealist tradition that has made Italian cinema great. Entirely spoken in Sardinian, Salvatore Mereu's latest film is freely adapted from Il vento e altri racconti (The Wind and Other Tales) by writer and tireless supporter of Sardinian culture Antonio Cossu. Between Caravaggesque images and profound realism, Bentu sets itself the task of photographing what remains of an ancient civilisation that, lacking machinery, had to deal with the vagaries of nature. The elderly Raffaele (played by Peppeddu Cucco, who as a child starred in Vittorio De Seta's Banditi a Orgosolo) and the young Angelino (Giovanni Porcu), the two protagonists of the film, thus represent the two sides of the same coin, of the same culture: one anchored to the past and the rhythm of nature, the other turned to the future, impatient and indomitable.
Selected several times at the Venice Film Festival (in 2003 with his first feature film Ballo a tre passi that won Critics’ Week, in 2010 with Tajabone in the Controcampo italiano section, two years later with Pretty Butterflies [+see also:
trailer
film profile] in the Orizzonti section and finally in 2020, out of competition, with Assandira [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Salvatore Mereu
film profile]), Mereu presents this year at Giornate degli Autori an atypical film born from a project created in collaboration with the Master's degree course in Multimedia Production at the University of Cagliari.
Bentu (wind, in Sardinian) tells the story of Raffaele, an elderly farmer who faces fatigue and the aches and pains of age with blind determination, taking care of the small pile of wheat he has harvested, which will serve as a whole year's supply for him and his family. Unlike many other farmers who have succumbed to the lure of technology, Raffaele, like many before him, relies on the wind to free the grain from the straw that covers it. The wind, however, makes him wait, stretching his days to infinity. Alone, in his small house in the country, far from everyone, the film's protagonist hopes for a miracle, believes with all his might in his lucky star, the one that will finally bring him a breath of wind.
The only human presence that brightens his days is little Angelino. If the old man's monotony is coloured every time the child appears, the latter can benefit from his experience, he can be inspired by the gestures he passes on to him, he can finally enrich himself with knowledge about nature that is gradually disappearing. Although intrigued by this ancestral knowledge, what really interests Angelino, however, is riding the old man's untamed mare, a lust he cannot contain despite Raffaele's refusal to let him ride her. If the old farmer's patience seems infinite, Angelino's seems to run out in an instant, replaced by a need for freedom that is impossible to contain.
A true face-to-face between man and nature, Bentu lays bare our current loss of contact with what surrounds us, our despotic need to always position ourselves at the centre of the universe. Slow and animated almost exclusively by the live sounds of nature as well as the mysterious language spoken by Raffaele and Angelino, Bentu forces us, even if only during the time of a film, to take a break from the hustle and bustle of life.
Bentu is produced by Viacolvento in association with Antioco Floris of the University of Cagliari Master's Degree Course in Multimedia Production and co-produced by the Istituto Superiore Regionale Etnografico (ISRE). Pascale Ramonda is in charge of international sales.
(Translated from Italian)
Photogallery 07/09/2022: Venice 2022 - Bentu
17 pictures available. Swipe left or right to see them all.
© 2022 Dario Caruso for Cineuropa - @studio.photo.dar, Dario Caruso
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