China Is Near

A professor decides to run for political office but finds his family standing in the way. Like 'Fists in the Pocket' director Marco Bellocchio's 1967 film focuses on a rather odd if not certifiable family. Co-written by Bellocchio it's all pitched at the level of a farce, as only the Italians know how, whose main targets are the bourgeois family and political system. Glaucoma Mauri, Pierluigi Apra' and Elda Tattoli play the members of the Gordini family, arguing about who wants to be in a relationship with who, and whose got who pregnant. Highlights include the professor's public speaking engagements, which includes getting his car trashed by angry voters, and having a cat thrown on him.

This playfully weird, dark satire of, well… everything from over-serious young Marxists, to the Church, to class climbing, to family, to marriage, to abortion to political ambition, to wimpy socialists who don't really believe in anything except 'success' entertained me in a way Bellocchio's much better known and more highly praised 'Fist In His Pocket' never quite did.

As with that earlier film, this is a very dark comedy, where everyone's morals, beliefs and ethics are paper thin and no one is worthy of much admiration. The young Bellocchio had quite a bleak view of human nature, and the shallow, manipulative way we use each other, our sexuality and our emotions. But here, like a Paddy Chayefsky film on acid, we laugh at the darkness at the same time we shudder.

The film did feel too long to me, and some of the points feel a bit beaten to death, but it also made me laugh aloud a couple of times, and smile for a lot of it. A nice combination of perversely challenging film-making, and sense of humor that reminded me of film-makers like Bunuel.