Venice Film Festival: Capsule Reviews of ‘Familia,’ ‘Cloud,’ and More

Refreshing storytelling abounds from Italy (although my people are still fearful of guy/guy love)! The Venice Film Festival offered a wide array of competitive and non-competitive films. I’ve been able to see quite a few, many in the Horizons section. Below are a few that deserve to find an audience (and, for some, distribution).

The Story of Frank and Nina (La Storia del Frank e della Nina) (Horizons Extra)

Paola Randi’s dynamic and wackadoodle comedy The Story of Frank and Nina curiously begins with a group of guys in Milan seemingly sabotaging an electrical factory of some kind—for what reason we have no idea…yet. The film then shifts focus and direction as we flashback to high school where Carlo (newcomer Gabriele Monti in a breakout performance), a graffiti artist known as “Gollum” is being bulled because of his inability to speak (he tries but all he can emit as a growl). Blond, handsome 17-year-old Frank (a terrific Samuele Teneggi) comes to his rescue and the two strike up a most unlikely friendship.

Carlo has also created a bond with a neighborhood Roma girl, Nina (Ludovica Nasti) who has a small child and is stuck in an abusive relationship. When Frank meets Nina sparks fly. And the trio are off on a few crazy adventures, most of them involving attempts to release Nina from her current horrific home situation.

Frank and Nina had me giddy with exhilaration, from the spirited pacing to the truly arresting camerawork to the hilarious and often moving work being done by the ensemble (kudos to the wonderful Bruno Bozzetto playing a former train station manager). The film is about a trio of dreamers who have a strong desire to break free from their suffocating worlds and find/create a new one for themselves.

I have to note that as much as it was obvious that Carlo was crushing hard on Nina, one could also sense he was more than a bit smitten with Frank, beyond the pal bond. I wish Randi had the courage to explore that further. But that’s my only fault with this gem of a film.

In Italian with English subtitles

Familia (Horizons)

“Famiglia” is the Italian translation for “family,” however the title of Francesco Costabile’s taut, often-terrifying new film is “Familia,” the Roman dialect form of the word. This is significant because it’s a bastardization of the language—a lazy dropping of the “gli” sound, mostly from the patriarch. The family portrayed in the film, based on real people and events, are a degraded version of the ideal Roman-Catholic family—one where the father lazily refuses to change his abusive ways.

Stunningly photographed by Giuseppe Maio, the film explores both the love and toxicity of the familial relations between a physically and psychologically damaging father Franco (Francesco Di Leva), his shellshocked wife Licia (Barbara Ronchi) and two sons. Luigi—Gigi to his friends— (Francesco Gheghi from Mascarpone: The Rainbow Cake) finds a creepy kind of solace in a neo-Fascist gang that worship Mussolini. Gigi feels a need to reconnect with his violent papa, which opens up a can of Pandora worms. His brother, Alessandro (Stefano Valentini) does not share his sibs desire to have dad back in his life. Or the life of their mother.

Familia poses the question: how much abuse can one family take? It also exposes the holes in the Italian legal system where it’s virtually impossible to report abuse to authorities without risking one’s life—at least that’s what is shown in the film.

Buoyed by Gheghi’s fierce and fully-committed performance, Familia is a thrilling, anxiety-inducing, deliberately frustrating cinematic rollercoaster ride that may lead to redemption or damnation. Either way, the film’s powerful message that no one should have to tolerate abuse is made crystal clear.

In Italian with English subtitles

Cloud (Out of Competition)

In our cyber-infested world, anger that turns to hatred and violence is a real and terrible reality. Often there is no reason for this except for petty jealousies and grudges snowballing into something horrific.

In Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s slow-burn-towards-a-raging inferno thriller, Cloud, Yoshi Ryosuke (Suda Masaki) is a factor worker who quits his job in order to become a reseller online. He’ll see whatever he thinks is the next rage, med devices, handbags, dolls…whatever he can flip—regardless of the item’s authenticity: “I’ll sell them all before I know they’re fake,” he boasts. Yoshi lives with his flighty girlfriend Akiko (Furukawa Kotone) in a remote home outside of Tokyo and has hired a young and devoted assistant, Sano (Okudaira Daiken, simultaneously hilarious and terrifying).

Things appear to be going quite well for Yoshi until strange incidents begin to occur that lead to an absolutely insane climax involving a lunatic group out to destroy him. Literally.

The second half of Cloud plays like something out of a Tarantino film and it’s immensely, if disturbingly, satisfying.

In Japanese with English subtitles.

Vittoria (Horizons)

I did not read much about Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman’s deeply affecting new film, Vittoria, before seeing it, so a certain realization afterwards made the achievement even more extraordinary.

Based on true events, the film centers on Jasmine (Marilena Amato), a married 40-year-old hairdresser living in a town south of Naples, with three sons who has a recurring dream where her late father is holding the hand of a young girl. She sees it as a sign that a daughter might fulfill her. “I have a deep desire. I want to follow it,” she tells her unconvinced husband Rino (Gennaro Scarica). But Jasmine does not want to carry another child (having undergone three cesarian births with her sons). She wants to adopt. Jasmine has her own agency. She’s not subservient to anyone, least of all her spouse.

Cassigoli and Kauffman have fashioned a heartwarming film about how one seemingly absurd, obsessive impulse can lead to something surprising, even sublime.

Spoiler—and it’s being publicized so it’s not really a spoiler.

Vittoria boasts non-professional actors portraying their own lives. I was shocked to read that because they all deliver honest, nuanced turns, especially Amato.

In Italian with English subtitles.

Nonostante (Horizons)

Nonostante, the title of Valerio Mastrandrea’s intriguing, strangely poignant new work is literally translated as, “despite.”

Mastandrea, co-wrote the clever screenplay (with Enrico Audenino) and also stars as a man who routinely wanders around the premises and hallways of a hospital and must occasionally fight strong winds that threaten to whisk him away—usually when an ambulance is around. Oddly, hospital staff and visitors don’t see him. But a handful of others do. They happen to be comatose patients whose bodies are in a kind of limbo. And it’s all very routine, until a new person (Dolores Fonzi) is admitted to the ward and a bizarre connection begins.

Mastandrea creates a fascinating world onscreen and while the narrative meanders a bit, the love story at the film’s core kept me enthralled.

 In Italian with English subtitles

Campo di battaglia (Battleground) (In Competition)

Gianni Amelio’s gripping new film, Campo di battaglia (Battleground), takes place in Northern Italy in the waning days of the first world war, in and around a Royal Italian Army facility where two medical officers, Giulio (Alessandro Borghi) and Stefano (Gabriel Montesi) are stationed. Both are childhood friends who could not be more different.

Stefano cannot tolerate soldiers with self-inflicted wounds who self-mutilate to avoid fighting and is almost demonic in his desire to send them all back to the front.  The only compassion he can muster is for those who show valor, as he defines it.

Giulio, known secretly as “The Holy Hand,” lives at another extreme. He’s much more understanding and vehemently opposed to war. And he does what he has to in order to ensure that his soldiers are sent home, even if it means seriously injuring them.

A nurse from their past arrives and her thoughtless actions cause the death of one of the soldiers and exposes Giulio. Then, the Spanish Flu begins spreading among the civilians as well as the soldiers.

Campo di battaglia loses some momentum once the disease begins to appear, almost wanting to be two separate films, but until then it’s a compelling look at two very different men who have a deep love for one another and are so fundamentally different in their political and social views. There is an attraction between the two, that, of course (this being an Italian film), goes unexplored. And the nurse seems to exist to prove their heterosexuality.

The other interesting thing about the movie is its depiction of WW1-era soldiers in horrific pain, mentally and physically, who will do whatever it takes to stay away from the battlefield. We’ve seen this type of portrayal often in American films about Vietnam and even WW2, but rarely in those about Italian soldiers(many Sicilian) fighting in the first world war.

In Italian (and some Sicilian) with English subtitles

Quiet Life (Horizons)

Resignation Syndrome (Uppgivenhetssyndrom in Swedish), an illness that causes children to completely disconnect from the world around them and, eventually, fall into a coma-like state, is said to have first appeared in Sweden in the 1990s. It escalated in the new millennium and began affecting hundreds of children—all refugees, seeking asylum after undergoing traumatic experiences in their (mostly) Eastern European countries. A 2020 Oscar-nominated short, Life Overtakes Me, shined a light on this mysterious sickness.

Greek writer-director Alexandros Avranas (Dark Crimes) has created a narrative centering on one family’s struggles with this incomprehensible yet epidemic syndrome.

Quiet Life centers on Natalia (Chulpan Khamatova) and Sergei (Grigoriy Dobrygin), a couple forced to flee their native country after an attack on Sergei’s life. They escape to Sweden with their two young daughters and are turned down for Asylum by a rather indifferent Migration board. Soon thereafter, both daughters fall into coma and the couple find themselves dealing with a medical team of bureaucrats right out of outrageous sci-fi B-movie, forcing them into a kind of capitulation so as not to lose visitation rights to their own kids.

The films satiric elements don’t always blend well with the docu-style approach, but Quiet Life is still a potent look at just how quickly our society can turn cold and ugly, even when the lives of children are at stake.

In Swedish and Russian with English subtitles.