Open Roads: New Italian Cinema At Lincoln Center 2014

[Chris Knipp]

EDOARDO WINSPEARE: QUIET BLISS/IN GRAZIA DI DIO (2013)


BARBARA DE MATTEIS, LAURA LICCHETTA AND CELESTE CASCIARIO IN QUIET BLISS

Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown

In Edoardo Winspeare's turbulent, shifty Quiet Bliss (In grazia di Dio) a family cedes to debt and Chinese competition in making high fashion wear for Milanese couturiers and must close their small clothing factory, sell it and their house, and move to their property overlooking the sea, which includes an olive grove. Back to the Land. But Quiet Bliss? Hardly. The English-language title is ironic if not simply off-the-wall. Four women of three generations are thrown on their own devices, and at each other's throats, while men hover on the periphery, only causing trouble. Before the move, two men, dad Croccifisso, (Antonio Carluccio) and brother Vito (Amerigo Russo) get caught while marooned in a stolen boat in some stupid but unspecified illegal venture and go to jail. Vito gets out and takes his family away to the north. This movie is like an opera in which instead of singing arias, the ladies and an occasional man periodically haul off and scream invective at each other, in dialect. The effect is wearing, if intermittently involving. As time goes on and the various plotlines sputter, it turns into a neorealist soap. The patois is thick and the setting is the stark but lovely Finis Terrae, Leuca, where the Adriatic meets the Ionian sea within sight of the Greek coast. This is in the region of Lecce, Puglia, in the tip of the heel of the "boot" of Italy where the Austrian-born director grew up, and with which he seems obsessed.

The film is notable not only for sunlit locations but Winspeare's use of non-pros throughout. In charge of the family is Adele, played by Celeste Casciario, the director's wife, a ravaged Sofia Loren type. It's Adele who decides the factory must close and the property must be quickly sold (at a considerable loss). Adele then persuades her frivolous sexpot daughter Ina (played by Laura Licchetta, Winspeare's stepdaughter), still in school and making out with various young men in cars, and her plump sister Maria Concetta (Barbara De Matteis), who wants to become an actress, to join her still-attractive mother Salvatrice (Anna Boccadamo) on the little farm. Adele begins selling their fruit, vegetables, and eggs to businesses in town to pay off outstanding debts. The patient, pious Salvatrice takes up with a 65-year-old local farmer, Cosimmo (Angelino Ferrarese), and a late-blooming romance is born that repels the obstreperous, foul-mouthed Ida. The nicest person in the story (and the most believable non-actor) is Adele's former classmate Stefano (Gustavo Caputo), a shy government bureaucrat who lives with his 90-year-old mother. Stefano spots Adele, whom he evidently had a crush on, in an office of Equitalia where he works protesting her debts, and he becomes a good samaritan, or tries to, beginning with adjusting down the debt. His efforts to tutor the lazy, stubborn Ina aren't much of a success at first, and Adele is hard hearted toward most men, including him. She and Maria Concetta hurl plenty of abuse at each other, and Maria Concetta misses a big audition for Ozpotek due to her sister's hard-heartedness, indifference, and obsession with debts. An inexplicable interlude when Adele treats herself one night to a costly dress and solitary fancy dinner suggests her responsible ways may indeed mask the selfishness the other women accuse her of.

The film loses focus in its latter half and suffers from an unappealing and somewhat opaque protagonist and a failure to develop other characters except peripherally. Prison visits, Salvatrice's wedding to Cosimo, and a subplot involving Ina's unintended pregnancy don't make up for this. A feel-good final tableau of reconciliation among the women seems hastily tacked on and leaves everything still dangling after over two hours of rambling episodes. The production is interesting for its unusual setting and "homemade" nature, including not only non-actors (though more refrained and subtle pros might have been better) but eco-sensitive use of local products and avoidance of gas emissions, more than for the erratic, overlong film. Writing by Alessandro Valenti, Anna Boccadamo, and Edoardo Winspeare and editing by Andrea Facchini could have used greater selectivity and focus. There seem to have been no English-language Berlinale reviews. One negative one in Italian on "filmtv" by Maurri 63, is brutal but makes good points. The film's Salentino dialect was subtitled for Italian viewers.

Quiet Bliss/In grazia di Dio, 127 mins., debuted in the Panorama section of the Berlinale 6 February 2014 and was released in Italy 27 March. Screened for this review as part of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema at Lincoln Center 9 June 2014.