A searing indictment of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi wrapped into a tender story of one man’s bid to overcome failure won a rapturous welcome from Cannes critics on Monday.
Director Nanni Moretti’s The Caiman is a multi-layered film, seamlessly delivering an emotional roller-coaster ride as the audience follows a comeback bid by Bruno, a bankrupt maker of gory B-movies, played by Silvio Orlando. One day a script lands in his lap, and without reading it to the end, he eagerly seizes on it for his next project. Only later, to his shock, does he realise the script is about Berlusconi, and thus begins his odyssey to get the film made, as his marriage collapses around him.
Moretti’s film was released in March, just before the elections in which the conservative Berlusconi was narrowly ousted after five years in office.
It has been packing Italian theatres with its portrayal of Berlusconi’s tight and corrupting influence on Italy, a courageous move in a country where the billionaire mogul controls a huge chunk of the media.
”Berlusconi was a dangerous political personality,” said Moretti, who won the Palme d’Or here in 2001 with The Son’s Room.
But he added that if he had to resume his film in three words, ”I would say that it is at once a homage to the cinema, a love story and a political film.”
”I wanted to make a film about many things at once,” he told Agence France-Presse. ”I couldn’t imagine making a film just about a person who I don’t like. That’s why I wanted to create other characters who I like.”
Berlusconi makes an appearance as himself via news footage of some of his foot-in-the-mouth gaffes.
But three other incarnations see him move from being a young bumbling businessman who embarks on a political career to save himself from jail after his fortune literally drops out of the sky, to a final terrifying bully on trial, played by Moretti himself.
Moretti said he had decided to take on the final role of Berlusconi because he wanted the last menacing reincarnation to be as physically far removed from the Italian leader as possible.
The director also takes his countrymen to task for their complacency, for as Bruno seeks backers and actors for his project, everyone tells him it is not good material for a film ”as everybody knows the story, there is nothing new in it”.
Moretti said he felt better since Berlusconi’s election defeat ”even more so because had he won he would have wanted to become president, which would have been even more humiliating for us”.
Halfway through the Cannes Film Festival, The Caiman, with flawless performances by the whole cast, is a strong contender for the Palme d’Or, up against Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s spirited Volver starring Penelope Cruz, the critics’ hottest tip so far.
But audiences here are also eagerly awaiting Marie Antoinette from United States director Sofia Coppola, starring Kirsten Dunst as the young Austrian princess who ends up embroiled in the intrigues of Louis IXth’s court. ‒ Sapa-AFP