I must have had an almond stuck in my rectum when I saw it first upon release, especially thinking that apart from some stylistic affectations that I still find unnecessary—the excessive glow against the digital feel of its crystal b/w or the fake cigarette burns, for instance—what had put me off then is just what enthralled me more at this round.
As much as gossip is always more interesting than facts, if Mank deserves any attention, it’s not for having lent an ear to it—perhaps rewriting history a touch too aggressively here and there—but for having dwelt on the adventurous lives that fed material and intentions of one of the most debated masterpieces in American cinema.
Hollywood at its glorious best, according to Fincher’s intriguing rendition, is an unfinished place populated by neurotic individuals who are not proud of what they do, hate their work, the friendships they maintain, and ultimately themselves. But it’s also a stage within another where true selves are vacant but for the echo of their unspoken torments in their virtuosic dialogues. A ruthless producer, an almighty entrepreneur, an arrogant genius, a disillusioned screenwriter and pantomime drunkard, and an only apparently airheaded blonde—Mank is a tragicomic carousel of magnificently cast and interpreted roles, dextrously spun by feverishly inspired pages that, to my partial defense, do require a few iterations to be appreciated in all their depth and clever writing. Never too late to reconsider a film.

The Woman Who Ran hides a clever, profound complexity behind stunning minimalistic appearances. To the irony of the title, the protagonist is temporarily on the run from a seemingly perfect relationship that doesn’t feel enough like life. A candid, attentive listener, she indirectly experiences joys and troubles of some old friends, who also lead apparently ideal lives, as they naturally surface during lengthy conversations. I wonder if solace is what she is unconsciously after as she discovers imperfections in unexpected places. Even the music, strangely hinting at vague diegetic qualities, seems to come from some abstracted vintage device. And so is the ending, which soothing images are actually those of another film. Stroke of genius.
On a different level, the theme of menace looms all over the story. That of men, often depicted as inept creepy figures. That of nature, somehow referred to through feral vignettes of fluffy ravenous felines and abusive chickens. And that of the environment—silent mountains, misty landscapes, technologically efficient architectures hiding mysterious inaccessible floors.

I browse through some old posters in a rack while my friend is queuing for drinks. Then I stop and look around the foyer. On every single object I lie my eyes on I see reflected the joy of acknowledging my physical presence in a cinema, and it feels great.
A few minutes later we sink in a familiar obscurity, but it only takes the time to read the opening card to be transported from the beautiful screening room of the Phoenix into a far less inviting place, and darker. An unfriendly metallic clatter breaks the murky silence. Frances McDormand opens a garage door letting a desolate brightness in. Quite a metaphor after over a year of pandemic captivity. I breathe the snow in like I could smell the cold, maybe I can. So, I think, this is the film everybody’s been talking about for months.
Watching Nomadland I couldn’t help contemplating what a stoical cinematic achievement it is to have shot a film like that. At the same time, I won’t lie, it felt a bit like watching a great film I have already seen. Even Frances McDormand seemed to me like giving a masterly performance she has already given. Maybe that’s because of how all the elements perfectly fit, or maybe because of how familiar are the emotions Chloé Zhao so tactfully captures. After all Nomadland is not a film about loss and absence, but rather one about what’s left, about presence, and the present. Again, quite timely so.

Whoever went to the cinema more than twice in his life knows that some films end and other don’t. There are rolling credits during which people get up and make their way hunched over between knees, abandoned coffee cups, and piles of popcorns to the exit, and other during which all stay sit, watching motionless names of strangers, waiting for an idea to take shape in their mind, the tears to dry, or for someone else to make the first brave move. Favolacce, the second directed as well as written by the D’Innocenzo brothers, is of this latter witchy breed.
Grown-up children awkwardly parented by a series of appallingly childish, useless, neurotic adults, are the strange souls with feral urges that populate a Roman summer of deafening cicadas.
Magnificently shot and interpreted, paced by the evocative music of Egisto Macchi¹ and the ethereal voice of Rosemary Standley², Favolacce is a suburban pastoral as true as the pages of a secret diary that seems to stir a reflection on what this generation is doing for the next and what kind of teaching is leaving behind.
Or maybe not. No matter. For as long as that doubt is alive, the spell cast by this special film will be with it, and so the desire to watch it again.

1. Egisto Macchi, Città notte, 1972.
2. Rosemary Standley & Dom La Nena, Birds on a Wire, 2014.

Among the many short films recently made by well-known directors (Mati Diop, Pablo Larraín, Paolo Sorrentino, Sebastián Lelio, to name some of the directors behind those I have seen) there is one that succeeded where others struggled to penetrate the creative muffling of this static unprecedented time.
Referring in the title to a strange epidemic case of compulsive urge to dance in the streets, Strasbourg 1518 implies an analogy between the extravagant historical episode and the current claustrophobic condition. With the domestic means that this period demands, Jonathan Glazer and Mica Levi meet again giving birth to a work that gradually convinces by making of the collective hysteria a hypnotic spectacle. The delirium and addiction of life in a cage according to the rare genius of one who managed to resist the torpor and keep feeding the artistic unquietness.