Open Roads: New Italian Cinema At Lincoln Center 2023

[Chris Knipp]

MONICA DUGO: LIKE TURTLES/COME LE TARTARUGHE (2022)


MONICA DUGO, RIGHT, IN LIKE TURTLES/COME LE TARTARUGHE

Hiding a while when things get tough

Like Turtles/Come le tartarughe, the experienced actress Monica Dugo's directorial and writing debut feature, concerns a well off bourgeois housewife's extreme reaction when her husband leaves her, and their two children, and the Filipina housekeeper, and their palatial apartment in the center of Rome, to take a break, or find himself. Tina (Dugo) takes up residence in her husband's space in the family's equally spacious custom-built family armadio, their wardrobe, which he has made available by removing his clothing. She remains in touch, with the door often open, but not quite involved normally in everyday family life. She promises to come out when her husband returns.

The style of this film has been called "elegant," and it precedes with thorough smoothness and confidence. It may seem unduly whimsical and fanciful to deal with withdrawal and depression in this way. However, frivolity and fantasy are features of some of Italy's greatest contemporary artists - of Fellini, for instance, and Italo Calvino, whose Barone rampante describes a 19th-cenury nobleman who climbs up and lives the rest of his life in a tree.

"I've dealt with hikikomori cases before," says Dr. Fabrizia Storzo, the psychotherapist, whom Lisa (director/lead acdtor Monica Dugo)'s grumpy tennis-playing teenage daughter Sveva (a forceful Romana Maggiore Vergano) brings to the apartment to See her after she's moved into his space in the giant family armadio(wardrobe) after her wishy-washy husband Daniele (Angelo Libri) removes his clothes and walks out. He does so, he explains to Sveva (he is still somehow in the area, and in touch) to find himself, to take a break, and not because of displeasure with Lisa but just because he's "depressed." Other characters include Sveva's poorly treated boyfriend Luca (Francesco Gheghi), rumpled-haired little brother Paolo (Edoardo Boschetti) and the Filipina housekeeper, who quits; an unseen mother-in-law who tends to call with her complaints at dinnertime. Daniele is apparently a coroner, a surgeon, as he tells seven-year-old Paolo, whose patients are in no danger of dying under the knife. For some reason he is already frequently away, and he may have lost interest in Lisa for some Time.

Lisa is pale and petulant but seems more cheerful once ensconced in the wardrobe. Her main function has been to maintain the smooth functioning of the family. She can only exert her power by disrupting it. When Dr. Storzo takes off her shoes and gets into the wardrobe to consult, Lisa launches into an angry and quite inappropriate lecture on how psychotherapy is a hoax and therapists mere money-grubbing quacks. She says they "authorize the selfishness and narcissism" of the "rich bourgeoisie" who "hide behind depression." But she expresses (to Paola) the truism "Hating is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." Her mother visits her, and offers wisdom too. Her husband probably is with another, older woman from work, with greasy hair and pockmarked face, spied by Sveva.

Glenn Kenny commented favorably on Like Turtles from Venice on RogerEbert.com saying that its commercial prospects are helped by it's being "Ferrante-adjacent," since its story relates to Elena's Days of Abandonment though less "raw and violent."

The device of the wardrobe - which can be removed after it has performed its function and Lisa has reemerged facing the new situation - is a neat one around which the screenplay neatly revolves. However the film winds up being rather fangless, as if it itself has withdrawn from the uneasy topics it caresses. (Perhaps that's what "elegant" means.) Dugo has delivered very watchable film. The images of dp Gianni Mammolotti gently remind us always that this is indeed happening in the centro storico of Rome.

Monica Dugo's directorial debut was made possible through the Venice Biennale College Cinema initiative. (A full cast list is not provided so some characters may be linked with the wrong actors.)

Like Turtles/Come le tartarughe B, 80 mins., debuted at Venice Sept. 2, 2022, also playing at Rio in Oct. Screened for this review as part of the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema June 1-8, 2023 series at Lincoln Center (with Cinnecittà).
Sunday, June 4 at 5:30pm (Q&A with Monica Dugo)