Open Roads: New Italian Cinema At Lincoln Center 2024

[Chris Knipp]

ZACKARY DELMAS IN UNA STERMINATA DOMENICA

ALAIN PARRONI: AN ENDLESS SUNDAY/UNA STERMINATA DOMENICA (2023)

TRAILER

Visual poem of a doomed new generation on Rome's outskirts

Speaking of his landmark early film Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklter wrote in theGuardian in 2019, "Teenage life is more like you’re looking for the party, looking for something cool, the endless pursuit of something you never find, and even if you do, you never quite appreciate it." This is the situation Alain Parroni captures in spades with his colorful, partly abstract debut feature An Endless Sunday/Una sterminata domenica. Only these three kids, the dark, handsome Alex (Enrico Bassetti*), whose nineteenth birthday it is when things begin, his hyperactive punkish younger pal Kevin ("Ke," Zackari Delmas), and their recessive, braided, tattooed friend (girlfriend of both?) Brenda (Federica Valentini) come from the impoverished outskirts of contemporary Rome, and they're not middle class, and the have no future. They have only their youth, which they feel slipping away.

This explains the air of psychedelic violence that pervades the opening, when the kids' little car gets a flat. This is also to introduce us to the acid-trippy cinematography of Andrea Benjamin Manenti, whose rich use of nature and dialogue closeups has been compared to the films of Terrence Malick. The kids are the stars, especially the boys, but the images are the ultimate stars. After all, as Catherine Bray says in her Variety review, these teens are "nihilistic" and "struggle to shape a sense of identity in a world that doesn’t seem to have much to offer them." Deborah Young points out in The Film Verdict this film provides "dazzling camerawork" and an "exceptional trio of teenage actors" but they "dangle from a weak narrative thread." That is Parroni's choice.

Things do happen, of course, and often very fast. They go mockingly into central, historic Rome to celebrate Alex's birthday. Brenda turns out to be pregnant. Alex starts working for rough German minimal farmer Domenico (Lars Rudolph), an uneasy relationship. Alex and Kevin come into conflict over Brenda. They see Brenda's grandma in the projects (it's not clear where they sleep). There is scavenging and theft. There is a party. Alex is provided with a rifle and may use it. But especially in the case of Kevin life seems to be a matter of pugnacious gesturing and poses. He and this film remind one of the snarling punk boys in the grainy black and white stills of the iconic American, Paris-resident photographer William Klein (1926-2022), who also made some films, and who defined the raucous, ugly-beautiful 1995 new imagery of a whole century.

William Klein is one connection. Another that has been mentioned is Larry Clark's 1995 Kids (a feature from an already famous still photographer of "nihilistic" (speed freak) nowhere (Tulsa) youth, and Gregg Araki's gay, humorous, defiant age-of-AIDS Nineties desperation celebrations like The Doom Generation. An Endless Sunday is even more empty and desperate - and beautiful than any of these, less naturalistic than Clark, less structured than Araki, but akin to them.

A comparison-link that is less favorable for this film is the French cinema of the Banlieue of which there are many examples from the Nineties to today, from Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine to gangster-gang war films by Jean-François Richet and Pierre Morel like Ma 6-T va crack-er or District B-13 or Ladj Ly's admired Les Misérables. While playing with gangster or sociological genres, these films set in the doomed projects in minority outskirts of Paris and other French cities depict a lively, highly structured social milieu and have lots of characters and layers.

Parroni's Endless Sunday has none of that, or the action of Kids or The Doom Generation.. It is an endless kaleidoscopic visual poem, and sometimes a sonic and visual scream, that apart the German farmer's grumpiness and the grandma's superstitions, and the lipstick-kissing of ancient Roman statues, has little overt connection with society or a world outside. A metaphor for the disconnectedness is Alex's accidental submerging of his cellphone so it only squeaks and croaks; and a finale that mixes car and motorcycle. At some point we realize that there is not only little action, but the action there is, is hard to read. Enthusiasts will love An Endless Sunday to death, but many will instantly loathe it. Nonetheless this is a cry, a scream, a song of abandoned Italian youth that in its own unique way updates Pasolini and his iconic Rome street kids books Ragazzi di Vita and Una Vita Violenta (A Violent Life) and his classic first film of aimless men Accattone (1961). That was a long time ago. And this is the way it is now. Parroni represents the new generation. This wasn't the easiest to take, but was the most radical and original film in Lincoln Center's 2024 Open Roads Italian film series. Original music by Shiro Sagisu.

An Endless Sunday/Una sterminata domenica,115 mins., debuted at Venice in the Orizzoni section (Special Jury Prize; FIPRESCI Prize) Sept. 1, 2023. It also showed at TIFF (Toronto) Sept 9, 2023. Screened for this review as part of the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series at Lincoln Center (May 30-Jun. 6, 2024). Showtimes at the Walter Reade Theater:
Sunday, June 2 at 1:00pm – Q&A with Alain Parroni

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* His intro internet page has clips of the film.