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 take my seat less than forty minutes after waking up. I am still chewing breakfast as the coffee I had no time to take at home lands on the side table just in time for the lights to dim. Just a few more souls scattered in the cinema, I casually notice. It’s a Monday morning after all, quite a treat to be here legs crossed in front of a screen.
Joel Coen’s take on Macbeth is paced by the leaden thumping of dense drops of water, wine, blood. Veering away from easy expectations, maybe the cliché, his elegant vision replaces the gore, the filth, the murk, with mist, clouds, and crows. The Tragedy of Macbeth exists in a surreal space between stage and set, and within the harsh lines of a near brutalist architecture somewhat reminiscent of Ken Russell’s The Devils or Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc.
Although at first sight I thought Denzel Washington too naturally charismatic for the role, my scepticism partly crumbled at his bravura slowly surfacing in Shakespearean waters. But it’s the two main female performances to have literally blown me away—Kathryn Hunter creepily contorting into the three witches, and of course Frances McDormand, a phenomenal Lady Macbeth carved in stone.

Here is another I would have probably skipped and I’m glad some obscure pre-festive mood made me not.
On the one hand The House of Gucci is not just a house of impressions but one of caricatures. In fact, it’s not even just a house but a tent, a proper big top with clowns in it. On the other hand, and right because of all the above, Ridley Scott’s detour into bourgeois family hell is also a greatly entertaining film. And if Al Pacino and the masterfully disguised Jared Leto bring the ironic element to the extent of farse, I must admit I couldn’t wait for them to be on screen. Overall the portrait of the Gucci family might be unflattering and certainly not quite tactful considering the sad unfolding of the events, but it’s hilarious and nicely cinematically rendered.
Passing over a few cheesily catchy dialogues (did I really hear Lady Gaga and Adam Driver exchange the lines, ‘I didn’t realise I married a monster.’ / ‘No, you married a Gucci.’?) The House of Gucci’s main flaw is a common one of biopics to pursue more facts, however juicy, than characters. The result is a story told by a relatively one-dimensional and unloved ensemble of misfits in which the most likeable seem to be marginal figures such as that of a greedy Iraqi financier and a rising star designer. But Tom Ford, no surprise, is shining in any incarnation.

Yes, it’s bad and utterly unoriginal in all sorts of ways. And yet, the candid simplicity of the scooby-doo-esque Ghostbusters: Afterlife somehow unfolds a completely unexpected charm. Children screamed at every jump-scare treat, however many, predictable, and all but scary. They laughed at the jokes, although most are terribly cliched and silly—no offence—even for their age. As to the adults, they might not have done any of the above, but even the more snobbishly sceptical like myslef will admit they were touched by the atmosphere and—why not—by the film’s nostalgic Eighties flavour.
Finding my way out in the dim light of the running credits, I am slowed down by a final double cameo and right then, on the crackling sound of the abandoned popcorns under my feet, I wonder what cinema really is about and realise how many incredible hats it can wear.

Just when I am about to lose faith in Western feature animation, here comes a masterwork. Le Sommet des Dieux made me feel the height and the bites of the arctic conditions more than any live-action film I have ever seen.
Based on a graphic novel, which is based on a book, which is based on real events, which are also probably based on something else, it manages to handle fiction with the stern grip of a documentary—a particularly remarkable achievement for an animated piece.
Le Sommet des Dieux is about obsessions, the myth of Sisyphus, and the scale of man compared to that of dreams—in this case rendered in the form of monuments of rock and snow and ice.

November bites like winter as I swiftly walk down Curzon Street. How glimmering Mayfair in the long urban nights. How beautiful London reflected on the wet pavements. I cross the foyer and rush to the bar after a glass of vodka, then straight to the screening room where we spot two central seats still unoccupied. When we realise that to reach them we are bothering the oldest couple in the cinema, the two are already kindly fiddling with jackets, scarves, hats and glasses—theirs full of rosé wine—to let us through. When they finally manage to open a narrow passage, we dive in with a million reverences, hiding the embarrassment behind the unbearable surgical masks. A Sorrentinian vignette.
Not long later Paolo is on the stage looking trimmer than ever and not much greyer than the last time I saw him. ‘It’s like when you have to go to the dentist,’ he says with his sly and melancholy half-smile. ‘You keep putting it off until the day comes when you can’t postpone any longer. This,’ pointing wearily at the screen behind him, ‘is the work of the dentist.’
The show begins from the sky. Below us, a sea lined by off-shore motorboats like gazelles in a blue savannah. Nothing extraordinary, until the camera rises to reveal Castel dell’Ovo, then Chiaia, Posillipo and beyond. A vintage Rolls-Royce elegantly runs down the stunning waterfront. We follow her at a distance to the magical rooms where the most beautiful and painful memories are to be unveiled.
Written four years ago for his children with the intention of never filming it—in his words, so that by reading it they could understand ‘why their dad is so weird’—The Hand of God is a film split in two like the city in which it takes place. The first part is a muffled endless summer where people eat mozzarella, beat aunties in fur and make erotic fantasies about those without. Where the biggest concern is whether el pibe de oro will finally join the Naples football team or not. But when the sun get suddenly eclipsed by a mean, unexpected moon, everything changes. The turmoil brought into Fabio’s life is the same narrative tear that gives to the film a new pace. In the second half, a providential series of figures go in and out of Fabietto’s life through a somewhat nostalgic montage that, with more haste I wish it had, will eventually take us to that fateful train to Rome. Taking off, after the sky again.
Although his recent Vatican series sported all Sorrentino’s aesthetic idiosyncrasies, it is thanks to the limitations of that very experience—says Paolo to Alfonso Cuarón in the Q&A after the screening—that he has learned to shoot with the simpler solutions that make this look so different from his previous ones. I wonder if it ever crossed his mind what Martin Scorsese once said, that when struggling with a scene he reflects on how Bresson would have shot it. And I wonder if this slightly more direct approach was dictated by the autobiographical nature of the film, by the desire to open up without filtering through heavy stylistic embroideries.
Bringing fresh, electric air to Sorrentino’s artistic path, although retaining many of his typical traits like a knack for aphoristic dialogues—at times a touch too unnaturally so—or a certain Fellinian taste for seamlessly moving through the facetious and the excruciating, The Hand of God is a venially flawed film that seduces nevertheless. And it does in the same way its author exposes himself, with the candid courage of vulnerability.

Coming back to it a few months after its release in winter, I noticed that along with the excitement of watching it again, I was particularly looking forward to revisiting two specific moments that, in fact, didn’t fail to move and enchant me again.
Fabietto and his mum are having a frugal dinner in the dim comforting light of the kitchen. It’s Fabietto’s birthday, but it’s a gloomy celebration as dad has been kicked out after a marital quarrel about his infidelities. ‘Really? Are you sure all you want for your birthday is milk porridge? Don’t you want me to make you something special?’ asks Maria. ‘Milk porridge is special. Besides, I remember, when I was little, and papà would go to Milan for work and you didn’t feel like cooking, we would make ourselves some milk porridge and then you’d let me sleep in your bed.’ It is a nostalgic time of family intimacy to which I can’t but respond with subdued tears. Even when Maria let a sense of bitterness sneak in. ‘Maybe he wasn’t really going to Milan.’
Later in the film, as Fabietto chases director Antonio Capuano for career advice, the conversation brings them to the sea. While the lights of dawn paint in cobalt the bay of Naples, the revered filmmaker presses on, shouting more and more aggressively. ‘In short, Schisa, you got anything to say? Or are you just a shit like everyone else? You got something to recount, or not?’ And I can’t help feeling just as questioned.

There is a shot towards the end of Happy Together—no spolier—where somebody is seen from afar through a long lens. The camera is spinning around him making the background move fast behind and creating an attractive effect. Having found particular favour among action directors in recent years and being the environment I work in more knowledgeable on such films than, say, Hong Kong independent ones, I had always heard this referred to as the Michael Bay shot. It is therefore with unspeakable relief that I feel now allowed to call it—at least in private, not to sound snobbish—the Wong Kar-wai shot.
Regardless of Happy Together having actual primacy in the use of telephoto tracking—I have no idea and couldn’t care less—one of the many aspects it fascinated me for is how the camera language is inventively explored without ever letting the narrative be upstaged by pure aesthetic choices. This results in a superbly composed visual storytelling that follows the characters along their emotional turmoils, and us with them.
In Happy Together the force of nature looms in the form of longing and distant memories over the tiny, dimly lit urban spaces in which its animal souls wander. Steamy kitchens, shabby flats, smokey locals, and narrow streets is where life gets caged, or where to tango steps it gets poisoned with passion.

‘Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.’ Never a sentence in a film described my current state of mind more accurately. So many times I’ve watched it and yet so long it always feels since the last. The Graduate is one of those very few films that in some fleeting way make me feel at home, where home is not a specific location from my past or present, but rather an imaginary place that is far more palpable—a feeling hard to articulate somewhere nearby the comforts of nostalgia.
On top of portraying an era anyone of any generation at some point in his life has dreamt of, what never fails to make me fall for The Graduate is its attractive combination of rebellious attitude, witty humour, and distinct Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? character.
Mike Nichols brings comedy to the screen in its purest sense. Making fun of a certain social structure, he stands against something—a brazenness inherent of the genre that in the last decades of cinema has regrettably faded away. Furthermore, The Graduate speaks with the very voice of those who just won’t fit—those who don’t feel up to expectations ruled by demanding times, who are eager to be something different, and have no idea what that is or how to achieve it. This is no hippy thinking in a hippy time—this is many of us today, this century.
The one thing I am surprised to find myself seeing as a flaw for the first time is the use of music. Out of the greatly popular Simon & Garfunkel’s songs come some iconic sequences such as the opening at LAX airport on the notes of The Sound of Silence, and of course the Golden Gate one on Mrs Robinson’s—but also some weaker transitional moments where the cinematic creativity seems to loosen the drive relying a little too much on the soundtrack. What a shame, I guess I am thinking, but also such a venial sin after all.

To see its title in capitals on a cinema letterboard is something special that keeps me for a minute although I’m late. I wonder how it felt to compose it from the top of a ladder one letter at a time—I am sure up close they are bigger than one would imagine.
Moments later I take a pew in my favourite seat right in the middle, at a distance dictated by my shortsighted eyes. The seats, the walls, the curtains—everything seems redder tonight. I don’t even know if that’s the dominant colour of the screening room but so it is in my memory as I try to write something about it.
Whatever spell brought In the Mood for Love to the end of its troubled production is the same I am put under as the beautiful Cantonese text card appears on screen, and subtitled I read—Hong Kong 1962.
The first part of the film is paced by intimate angles, slow motion scenes, the music masterfully alternating a seducing waltz and a couple of Nat King Cole’s suave Latin detours. Wong Kar-wai’s love for his characters is palpable and contagious—we are soon in love too. Framed by claustrophobic urban interiors and narrow city corners, life flows almost unseen, muffled behind misted windows, steamy kitchens, the pouring rain. I wonder if Saul Leiter was ever a reference or an inspiration. The second part takes a different tone as if dried up by stranded feelings, secrets too long kept, or simply time. Reality brutally interferes. Dreams become memories. What wasn’t said will stay unheard forever.