Open Roads: New Italian Cinema At Lincoln Center 2024

[Chris Knipp]

ROBERTA TORRE: MI FANNO MALE I CAPELLI (2023)


ALBA ROHRWACHER IN MI FANNI MALE I CAPELLI

Movie love madness in a tour de force by Alba Rohrwacher

Award-winning Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher, sister of director Alice Rohrwacher - the two are known for their collaborations in The Wonders and Happy As Lazzaro - gets to give her all in Mi fanno male i capelli ("My Hair Hurts"), a rather slight film that is essentially an extended mad scene. Rohrwacher plays Monica, a woman losing her memory and replacing real recollections with manufactured ones. In a far-fetched but cinematic conceit, the new memories are largely based on snatches of old films featuring Monica Vitti, the great Italian actress of the Sixties who among other things was the muse of directorial great Michelangelo Antonioni.

Some viewers will wish that we were simply watching Monica Vitti in her prime, an image that is magical, evokes the best days of Italian cinema, and. never tires. Although Rohrwacher puts great energy into her performance as the madwoman Vitti acolyte and is well aided by the staff of Roberto Torre's film with hair, makeup, and costume (by Massimo Cantini Parrini), constantly changing and mimicking scenes from various Monica Vitti films that include ones co-featuring Marcello Mastroianni and Alain Delon such as L’avventura, La notte, L’eclisse, and Il Deserto rosso, these tend, as mimicry, to disappoint by reminding us how unique and special the real Monica Vitti was. Rohrwacher has energy and technical skill; Vitti had panache and charisma, that unique je ne sais quoi her imitator here lacks.

But to appreciate the oddly titled Mi fanno male i capelli (which echoes a line in Antonioni's gloomyIl deserto rosso) we must disregard this discrepancy and focus instead on the cunning ways the film morphs in and out of clips and interweaves them with Rohrwacher's improvised mad scenes. The Rohrwacher "Monica" frequently changes from dark brunette to blonde, as does Vitti in the clips. For a while the mad Monica comes to believe that she is talking to frequent costar Alberto Sordi (his voice somewhat unconvincingly immitated offscreen), and she fashions an extended fantasy that Sordi has invited her to officiate at a grand reception at his home.

Meanwhile a less developed, and rather less engaging, "real" subplot - to anchor the flimsy scenario in a harsh reality - unfolds, involving the mad Monica's husband Edoardo (Filippo Timi), and his financial woes. He has transferred them from a Rome house to one by the sea where it is more "quiet" but major debts and a breached contract are threatening to force relinquishment of the Roman property. His mother is urging him that he needs to transfer his wife to a sanatorium while he seems to enjoy having her roam free with her fantasies and her role-playing. The filmmakers do too. Their and Alba Rohrwacher's fantasy has its moments. But it burns itself out quickly and the film's 83 minutes are more than enough.

Beside the hair, costume, and makeup help, the Wong Kar-wai composer Shigeru Umebayashi provides a warm and glowing musical background. The seaside moments are evocative and so is a sequence when "Monica" wanders off into a sunbaked seaside movie house whose big screen magically is showing the cinematic Monica.

Rohrwacher impersonated another Italian film great last year, playing the elusive Third Man star Alida Valli in Saverio Costanzo's Finalmente Alba. Reports (on Letterboxd) are that that one also features a lion in flight toward the end, an odd coincidence, and, the Letterboxd contributor thinks, both bad movies.

Mi fanno male i capelli, 83 mins., debuted Oct. 19, 2023 at the Rome Film Festival (xnot included at Venice), Italian theatrical release Oct. 20. Screened for this review as part of the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series at Lincoln Center (May 30-Jun. 6, 2024). Showtime at the Walter Reade Theater:
Sunday, June 2 at 7:00pm


THE REAL MONICA VITTI: HER HAIR NEVER HURT (EXCEPT IN RED DESERT)