09/08/2010

After screening his nearly four-hour documentary Rata Nece Biti, on the aftermath of the war in the former Yugoslavia, at Locarno (then going on to win the Turin Film Festival and a David di Donatello), Daniele Gaglianone returns to narrative cinema and the Swiss festival with Pietro, the only Italian title in competition for the Golden Leopard. Though this piece of cinéma vérité is not entirely successful, it strives sincerely to capture, through the story of an outcast, the heart of the society in which we live.

Pietro (Pietro Casella) is subjected to daily humiliation and abuse. He lives in an anonymous neighbourhood on the outskirts of Turin, and works under the table distributing flyers on the street. “This is not a centre for the handicapped,” his boss berates him, and he isn’t treated much better his junkie brother – with whom he shares an apartment inherited from their parents – and friends.

“They really do love me,” he tells himself, even though “they” amuse themselves by making a fool out of him. Which he to a point accepts – because even that is yet another way of finding one's place in the world.

Pietro’s terribly dull routine, however, is interrupted by a co-worker, who’s as desperate as he is. Pietro sees himself in her fragility, which so closely resembles his own. He thinks he sees a ray of hope and wants to share it with the “group”. But one must beware of breaking out of one’s ascribed role: the situation degenerates, in an inevitably dramatic crescendo.

As dramatic – for its bleakness and desolation – as the environment in which Pietro, his brother Francesco (Francesco Lattarulo, who works with Casella in theatre and on TV as a comic due) and drug dealer Nikiniki (Fabrizio Nicastro, previously seen in Gaglianone’s second film, Nemmeno il destino) live. From among metro bullies and metro inspectors that make the bullies seem innocuous, there emerges a portrait of a society that has eliminated all tenderness and compassion. Of an army of frustrated people desperately looking for someone weaker – to oppress, ridicule, threaten.

Scripted by the director – and the result of a long search for the right “form” to use (low-cost digital? a classic film structure?) that led Gaglianone to ultimately unite a low budget with high-quality production values (photography is by Gherardo Gossi) – Pietro, was produced by Babydoc Film and Fabbrichetta, with support from the Film Commission Torino Piemonte.

Lucky Red is releasing the film on August 20, while international sales are being handled by Ellipsis Media International.

(Translated from Italian)