La bocca del lupo

I went to see this film last night at the Melbourne International Film Festival. I must admit that the only reason I went was that the film is set in the city I was born and where I lived for the first two decades of my life. The story of Mary and Enzo was interesting and could have been very poignant. However, it was engulfed by a messy and incoherent collection of images from a bygone era which made no sense at all and added nothing to the story. It felt like a film student project where the student had been given full access to old footage and went for broke. It was obvious that the film attempted to recreate the poetic atmosphere of a Terence Davies production. In Davies's films all the component work harmoniously together. In this case, all the components fell apart and crushed loudly against the rocky beaches of the Genoese coastline. And sadly, the power of the story of Many and Enzo was weakened by the effort.