Roberto Succo

ROBERTO SUCCO is a good movie, especially when considering the fact that it's based on a true story. But if you want to watch a real, disturbing 'serial killer movie' like only the French can make (meaning character driven and néo-realiste), check out HARRY UN AMI QUI VOUS VEUT DU BIEN ("with a friend like harry" in english), C'EST ARRIVÉ PRÈS DE CHEZ VOUS ("man bites dog") and BERNIE. Also, if you can find it, see SEUL CONTRE TOUS ("i stand alone") by Gaspar Noé.

SUCCO just doesn't have the intensity and the tension that those movies have. But it has its moments. The minimaliste direction and the outstanding performance of Stefano Cassetti make it an enjoyable ride after all. But again, it just can't compete with HARRY.

This film is stunning but really.

Everything is great; cast's performances, cinematography, plot, score and soundtrack, editing, and of course directing. All this makes you gaze at the empty screen after the movie's over for some minutes and think 'wow!'.

Maybe the film might be a bit too violent for some people. The violence in this motion picture is actually quite interesting. On the one hand there is graphic violence, gore; on the other hand the violence is underneath. It is how easily and spontaneously Succo kills that really shocks, more than the blood. And the fact that Roberto Succo really lived should really frighten.

The director Cédric Kahn in fact tried to show as less blood as possible, but still wanted the audience to be shocked. To do this he stays objective, he never tries to condemn Succo's acts or even to explain them. No, he just shows them. This gets even more ambiguous with Succo's love affair. Through this romance he seems to be quite a nice guy, strange but nice. So, on the one hand he is a really bad killer, and on the other hand he is a usual man in love. And this really killed me, I loved that effect. You don't really hate this guy, Succo, but you don't really love him neither. Kahn pushes this effect even further. The whole movie is structured that way. There are funny parts or love scenes and there are violent parts. So you can't just put this film in some category. The film is ambiguous in itself.

Then the cinematography. That is really great, especially in a scene where Succo climbs up on the prison's roof to kill himself (but the building isn't high enough he complains, actually this is one of the funny scenes). Most of the shots look like paintings. Really great job the director of photography did here.

The cast is great. Stefano Casseti had never acted before! He was discovered in a café by a friend of the casting director. But his performance is stunning! He has such great eyes, really scary, but also sad.... Islid Le Besco is perfect as usually and Patrick Dell'Isola should be mentioned also for his great acting.

So, I could go on and on that way, but just get that movie watched guys, it really is worth to be seen and you sure won't regret.

Stefano Cassetti, who was living in France, red on a newspaper that a director was looking for a beginner, Italian mother tongue but fluent french speaking, to shoot a movie as leading actor; then he decided to go to the casting. He was "obviously" signed on. I suggest that all of you should stare at his almost unbelievable without-expression look. A real perfection! In my opinion the movie shows the natural capabilities of a young actor who proves to be completely at his ease in the complex role of a multi-identity psycho killer who's capable to commit unexplainable crimes but also to act as a nice and sensitive guy. Noteworthy also the dialogs.

This is French movie about a real-life Italian killer, Roberto Succo (Stefano Cassetti), who escaped a mental institution and went on a crime/murder spree all over Europe. He was somewhat similar to American killers Gary Gilmore (the subject of "The Executioner's Song")and Charles Starkweather (who loosely inspired "Badlands"). However, he was more a more prolific killer than the former, but didn't cause nearly as much panic as the latter--it actually took the police some time to piece together the various random crimes he was committing, which didn't immediately escalate to murder. The film "Roberto Succo" though probably MOST resembles the two later French "Mesrine" films (with Vincent Cassel), and like those, it seems to hew pretty closely to the real-life inspiration. Unfortunately, Succo was not nearly as interesting of a criminal as Jacques Mesrine, and Stefano Cassetti is not nearly as compelling of actor as the great Vincent Cassel.

During his crimes Succo stopped to rather tenderly romance a naive, 16-year-old French virgin named "Lea" (Isild Le Besco). But she was neither really an unwitting accomplice in his crimes like the real-life Carol Fugate (Starkweather's teenage paramour) or a sexy "moll" along the lines of the real-life Nichole Baker (played by Roseanne Arquette in "The Executioner's Song") or the character played by Ludivine Sagnier in the "Mesrine" movies. The unconventionally beautiful French actress Isild LeBesco does two things really well--one is act and the other is get naked, and she doesn't get nearly enough chance to do either here. Ludivine Sagnier has less screen time technically in the "Mesrine" movies than LeBesco does in this, but she is quite a bit more effective.

The film basically follows Succo as he commits his incredibly random crimes, and since Cassetti isn't the most exciting of actors, the film largely lacks a center and becomes quite boring. The police pursuit when it finally happens is almost an afterthought and the prison scenes at the end, while necessary to tell the full story, only prolong an already rather dull movie. It could have been improved with a stronger central performance, or if LeBesco had had a bigger role or had the kind of screen presence she would eventually develop in her later films (she is STILL by far the best reason to see this). Much of it though you have to blame on the filmmakers who perhaps stick TOO MUCH to the real-life inspiration at the expense of of making a very dramatically compelling movie.

"Roberto Succo" is a rarity in French cinema: a movie featuring a teenage girl who isn't the craziest person in it. The fact that the girl is played by Isild le Besco, who used to specialise in crazy teen girl characters, further underlines this point.

Aside from that the movie is pretty negligible. It's too long winded, or perhaps just too plain long, to really hit any notes. It's about a crazy psychopath, and he was surely well cast, with his piercing, bulging eyes. But the movie doesn't have any shocks, any suspense, or much of anything. You know the guy's crazy but he doesn't feel dangerous. I think "crazy", when not married with danger, is merely annoying. I wanted the guy caught or killed, but wasn't into waiting two hours for it to happen.