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Genre:
Drama/Thriller
Director:
Gabriele Salvatores
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“Quo vadis, baby?” is a
quote from Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. And that quote
refers to the title of a famous American movie from the 50’s. Quote after
quote – not just in the dialogues but also in images and music – Gabriele
Salvatores (Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film with Mediterraneo
in 1991) accomplishes an act of love for cinema.
An act of love for films,
and for filming in general. The director uses different shooting
techniques for the scenes set in the present – cold, bluish digital images
– and the scenes from the past – home movies from childhood. And the
story, somehow, unfolds around a mysterious videotape.
Giorgia, the lead
protagonist, is a detective without a gun, but she shoots at the people
she investigates with a camera. As she points the camera, she wounds.
And a camera turned on her own life hurts as much as a bullet.
So, filming, shooting,
the camera eye as something that can affect our reality. The film even
suggests that films can hide the answers to our questions. Twice the
protagonist says “I don’t like films” or “I don’t go to the movies”, and
twice the answers to the questions she’s asking are hidden in two films.
The story has cinema as
its background. Of the main characters, one is an actress, the other a
director and cinema professor. The professor’s house is homage to cinema,
with posters of cult movies scattered all over, and on the wall a huge
painting of a half-empty smoky movie theatre, like the ones where the
history of cinema was made.
The plot doesn’t unfold
in chronological or logical order. It’s rather like a private
investigation. Just like a private detective, the audience starts off
knowing nothing. They are given scattered clues, flashes of knowledge,
which the audience is asked to recompose like a puzzle. The story is
constructed from inside by the viewer, who takes active part in the making
of this noir.
Even music becomes a
point of view of what is happening. The soundtrack made by four
saxophones, a piano and a cello – recorded at the Philip Glass’ Looking
Glass Studios in NY – belongs to the dark, noir world of the film, to the
blue of the movie.
As a character in the
films says of herself, Salvatores sees “pure cinema inside” of him. And he
becomes it.
Reviewed by
Claudia Sandroni,
Premier Movie
Reviews 2008
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