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La conversione

The true story has put the fear of god in the directors who consider making it, but finally, it was Italian maestro Marco Bellocchio who took on the project on a person who goes by the name of Edgardo Mortara. An almost three-plus month shoot in Bologna and Rome, Marco Bellocchio co-wrote with Susanna Nicchiarelli, this is the true-life drama set in 1858. La Conversione stars Paolo Pierobon, Barbara Ronchi, Fausto Russo Alesi, Filippo Timi, Fabrizio Gifuni, Enea Sala, playing Mortara as a child, and Leonardo Maltese, playing Mortara as an older boy.…...

Shooting has begun in Roccabianca in the province of Parma, Italy, on Marco Bellocchio’s new film, “La Conversione” (The Conversion), inspired by the story of Edgardo Mortara, the Jewish child who in 1858 was removed from his family to be raised as a Catholic in the custody of Pope Pius IX. Bellocchio is pictured, above, on set in Roccabianca this week.

“La Conversione” stars Paolo Pierobon, Barbara Ronchi, Fausto Russo Alesi, Filippo Timi, Fabrizio Gifuni, Enea Sala, playing Mortara as a child, and Leonardo Maltese, playing Mortara as an older boy.

The film is an IBCmovie and Kavac Film production with Rai Cinema, with the support of the Emilia Romagna region and its film commission, in co-production with Ad Vitam Production in France, and Match Factory Productions in Germany. It is produced by Beppe Caschetto and Simone Gattoni.

The screenplay is by Bellocchio and Susanna Nicchiarelli, with the collaboration of Edoardo Albinati and Daniela Ceselli,...

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.

At least that.s the way Marco Bellochio would have us believe in a film whose...

IFC Films has picked up North American rights to Marco Bellocchio's "Vincere," which stars Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Mussolini's first wife, Ida Dalser.

The film, which had its world premiere at the Festival de Cannes in May, next travels to the Toronto International Film Festival, where it will have its North American premiere, and then the New York Film Festival for its U.S. bow.

Written with Daniela Ceselli and directed by Bellocchio, "Vincere" also features Filippo Timi in a dual role as both Mussolini and his illegitimate son. Mario Gianani, Hengameh Panahi and Olivia Sleiter produced the film.

The deal, negotiated by IFC's Arianna Bocco with Panahi of Celluloid Dreams, is the distributor's sixth acquisition out of the Cannes lineup, where it also picked up Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist" and Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank."

"Vincere" will be released via IFC in Theaters platform as a VOD...

Best Screenplay Any of those listed for best film, in addition to: Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere (co-written by Bellocchio and Daniela Ceselli), about how Benito Mussolini mistreated his first wife (Giovanna Mezzogiorno, top photo) and son while millions of Italians thought he was just the greatest guy around. Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric (written by Paul Laverty), about a postman who gets soccer player Eric Cantona (middle photo) to become his life coach. Writer-director Xavier Giannoli’s In the Beginning (bottom photo), in which a con man gets a small town to build a highway. Photos: Courtesy Festival de Cannes...

Venice International Film Festival

VENICE, Italy -- Italian director Paolo Franchi's brittle little story of male angst tells of a man named Bruno (Bruno Todeschini) who spends all his time looking glum and wandering off on his own.

Something is happening to Bruno, and it may be the result of learning that he is sterile or that his company is in financial trouble and the bank manager has given him a week to settle his debts. Perhaps it's just that he hasn't told his wife anything about it and given that the radiantly perfect Irene Jacob plays his loving spouse Anne, perhaps he's simply off his nut.

Cryptic but not engaging, and with a painfully loud and ugly sound mix, the film, which screened In Competition at the Venice International Film Festival, is unlikely to travel far beyond its home market.

Not very much becomes clear in the murky screenplay, which Franchi cowrote, especially when it introduces a suicidal stalker named Luca (Elio Germano) who turns out to be the son of Bruno's banker Mr. Neri (Paolo Graziosi), who has gone missing. Luca has panic attacks, is cruel to his patient girlfriend Elisa (Mimosa Campironi) and has sexual fantasies about Bruno's wife.

Unlike Bruno, who becomes increasingly detached from everyone including Luca after the boy tells him he has murdered his father. Ordinarily, that would lead to some tension in a movie but not in this one.

FALLEN HEROES Fallen Heroes (Nessuna qualita agli eroi)

An ITC Movie production

Director: Paolo Franchi

Writers: Paol Franchi, Daniela Ceselli, Michele Pellegrini

Producers: Beppe Caschetto, Anastasia Michelagnoli

Director of photography: Cesare Accetta

Production designer: Gianmaria Cau

Music: Martin Wheeler

Co-producers: Donatella Botti, Elda Guidinetti, Andres Pfaeffli;

Costume designer: Grazia Colombini

Editor: Alessio Doglione.

Cast:

Bruno: Bruno Todeschini

Luca: Elio Germano

Anne: Irene Jacob

Cecile: Maria DeMedeiros

Giorgio Neri: Paolo Graziosi

Elisa: Mimosa Campironi

Bruno's mother: Alexandra Stewart

Exhibition lecturer: Rinaldo Rocco

No MPAA rating, running time 102 minutes...

"What an inert, motionless life I lead," bourgeois doctor Mori (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) intones late in "The Nanny", an unfortunately apt summation of veteran Italian director Marco Bellocchio's competition film. Loosely adapted from a Luigi Pirandello story, attractively made and capably performed, the film is nonetheless fatally undone by a story that lacks emotional charge or strong dramatic conflict.

Set in turn-of-the-century Rome, when Italian society was convulsed by political strife and economic life altered by the vast migration to its large cities, the story focuses on the emotional paralysis developing between Mori, a wealthy, socially conscious doctor who operates a sanitarium for the mentally ill, and his young wife Vittoria Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), increasingly remote and sullen as her pregnancy nears full-term. Following the birth of her son, Vittoria retreats into depression, unable to provide love or comfort to her child.

With his son refusing to breastfeed from Vittoria, Mori enlists the services of Annetta (Maya Sansa), an illiterate, beautiful young woman whose jailed lover, the father of her child, is imprisoned for his revolutionary activities. Annetta reluctantly agrees to leave her own child and assumes nursing responsibilities.

Unfolding almost exclusively within Mori's vast mansion, the movie charts the complications of Annetta's arrival. But the script by Bellocchio and Daniela Ceselli loses concentration and wanders in different directions. Incorporating Vittoria's profound emotional crisis at her loss of identity, a complicated, potentially fascinating development is arbitrarily dropped by a second narrative thread: The growing relationship between Mori and Annetta when he begins reading letters from her lover and agrees to teach her to write.

Like his Cannes competition effort, "The Prince of Hamburg", two years ago, Bellocchio can't breathe life into a period work denied interior life or emotional volatility. It introduces valuable ideas but fails to mediate the work in a lively or intelligent way.