Arizona Reporter - Movie Reviews - 22/12
VINCERE (Win)
IFC Films
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: Marco Bellocchio
Written By: Marco Bellocchio, Daniela Ceselli
Cast: Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Filippo Timi, Fausto Russo Alesi, Michela Cescon, Pier Giorgio
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 12/14/09
Opens: March 19, 2010
Silvio Berlusconi, the current prime minister of Italy, had his nose broken by a man in the crowd on December 13. Considering the rising level of violence in that country recently, anyone with a sense of history will be reminded of Italy’s days under fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. The best news might have been that Mussolini had his nose—and other parts--broken by a partisan because Il Duce allied himself with the wrong guy during World War II. He got his comeuppance in ’45, but his first wife and their son got the shaft early on.
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At least that’s the way Marco Bellochio would have us believe in a film whose outcome might remind cinephiles of Isabelle Adjani’s role as the title character in “The Story of Adele H,” about Victor Hugo’s daughter who has an obsessive love of a lieutenant whose rejection literally drives her crazy. Bellocchio’s unhappy heroine, Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) and the man who became her lover in 1914, Benito Mussolini (Filippo Timi), meet cute when a rally of Mussolini’s fellow socialists leads to a brutal police reaction. Mussolini—whose affinity for socialism will turn an about face later—grabs Ida from the street, leading her into an alley and pretending that he is not a part of the demonstration. Chemistry between the two is instantaneous, though one wonders whether the passion is unrequited given the man’s indifferent attitude versus the woman’s moans and yelps in a steamy sex scene.
Nobody can really prove that Ida and Benito got married because no certificate of wedlock was found—a legality that becomes central to “Vincere”’s entire conflict. When they had a son (Fabrizio Costella) in 1915, Mussolini acknowledged the lad, though the creep later reneged when the dictator’s lover becomes increasingly obsessed with the man, who by now has denied having ever married her. When she ultimately winds up in asylums for the mentally insane under the care of sadistic nuns, she is so adamant on proving that she’s Mussolini’s wife that when she got a chance to be released if she withdrew her accusation, she refused.
Bellocchio mixes archival clips from the period 1907 to the beginning of World War II, showing Mussolini as a bombastic bag of wind who is nonetheless cheered, in at least one clip, by a crowd approaching one hundred thousand. Interesting about the man’s opportunism, as we see here. At first he is a socialist, pacifist, and atheist, in one speech before a small body of fellow leftists “proving” that God does not exist by announcing, “If God exists, let him strike me dead…I’ll give him five minutes.” God did not take the bait to Italy’s misfortune.
Filippo Timi, a well-known stage personality in his native land, turns in an intense performance, positing a man who gains a following partly through his long pauses before answering questions, his searing look, his rabid spirit when demonstrating for the socialist cause. Similarly the same actor does a convincing take as his own son, who is regularly named Benito Dalser after his mom though he is intent on proving that he is a Mussolini. The real kudos go to the beautiful Giovanna Mezzogiorno (interesting, isn’t it, how much more expressive the Italian names are? Would anyone want to be named Jane Afternoon?) Known to American movie-lovers largely through her role in Mike Newell’s “Love in the Time of Cholera,” where she portrays a woman who, this time, breaks the heart of her lover, Mezzogiorno is a treat for the eyes. Mussolini must have been crazier than she to ever throw her overboard.
VINCERE (Win) IFC Films
Unrated. 129 minutes. © 2009 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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