Open Roads Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Open Roads is an all-too-brief survey of new Italian cinema presented annually by New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center. Now in it sixth year, the series offers a wide selection of films, most of which will never see distribution in the US; this year's festival runs from May 31 until June 9, and further details (including ticket information) can be found on the Open Roads website.

Anchored by a terrific supporting performance by Michele Placido, Michele Soavi's dark, twisted The Goodbye Kiss is a hell of a lot of fun to watch, and easily the most enjoyable film I've seen at Open Roads. Sold as a political thriller, the film in fact dabbles in multiple genres, mixing thriller with heist and horror, all presented with a knowing nastiness that, by the movie's end, has you smiling when you should be recoiling in disgust.

The movie stars Alessio Boni (The Best of Youth) as Giorgio, a one-time hardline leftist who flees Italy when a bomb he helps plant accidentally kills a bystander. After some time with communist guerillas in an unnamed Central American country, he executes his best friend in exchange for a French passport, and returns home, bored and unsettled enough to risk arrest. And, upon arrival in Italy, he is immediately set upon by Michele Placido's Anedda, a cop who has pictorial evidence of Giorgio planting that deadly bomb; rather than do serious prison time, he agrees to give Anedda the names of everyone in the organization of which he was once a member. Thus, after two years in prison, he's free and can begin working on official forgiveness, or "rehabilitation."

Open Roads is an all-too-brief survey of new Italian cinema presented annually by New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center. Now in it sixth year, the series offers a wide selection of films, most of which will never see distribution in the US; this year's festival runs from May 31 until June 9, and further details (including ticket information) can be found on the Open Roads website.

Quo Vadis, Baby? opens promisingly enough, with a female photographer spying on a trysting couple in a hotel room from a lofty perch in what appears to be a skyscraper in mid-construction. The woman mutters angrily at the far-away couple to position themselves better for her lens, and complains to herself about the freezing weather. She is Giorgia (Angela Baraldi), a private investigator who appears to make her living entirely from tracking down and exposing cheating spouses, and has successfully made herself invulnerable to the feelings of her often broken-hearted clients. That evening, a box of tapes arrives at Giorgia's flat, sent by a friend of Ada (Claudia Zanella), her late sister who shocked everyone by committing suicide sixteen years earlier. The tapes are revealed to be video diaries kept by Ada during the final year of her life, a year she spent living in Rome, pursing her dream of being an actress; with the aid of strong liquor and hand-rolled cigarettes, Giorgia immerses herself in them, and in her sister's secret life.

Despite that tantalizing opening, however, the movie dissolves into a mass of stereotypes and missed opportunities. Its clumsy plotting and even more awkward characterizations are surprising and, coming from director Gabriele Salvatores -- the man who gave us the gracious, charming Mediterraneo -- deeply disappointing.

Open Roads is an all-too-brief survey of new Italian cinema presented annually by New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center. Now in it sixth year, the series offers a wide selection of films, most of which will never see distribution in the US; this year's festival runs from May 31 until June 8, and further details (including ticket information) can be found on the Open Roads website.

Not much happens over the course of Giorgio Diritti's directorial debut, The Wind Blows Round. A man and his family move into a small, foreign town and, eventually, they leave. Very little more exciting than that ever happens, and yet the movie is riveting, exploring such age-old issues as man's inhumanity to man while quietly, simply watching people live. Set in the tiny, fictional town of Chersogno in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, the film is choked with stunning scenery, each alpine scene more awesome -- and, often, more intimidating -- than the next. The gorgeous-yet-severe landscape combines with the movie's score and its unpredictable characters to create an ever-present tension that, though it seems unlikely in a film as slow-moving as this one, is in fact its driving force.