The Family Friend (2006)
(L'amico di famiglia)
Country: IT/FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 103m
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Cast: Giacomo Rizzo, Laura Chiatti, Gigi Angelillo, Marco Giallini
Synopsis:
A tailor and usurer of the lowest order finances a wedding at which he exacts a terrible price from the bride in order to cancel the debt. She in turn takes an elaborate revenge.
Review:
With a main character so Shakespearean in his miserliness and ethnicity (named Jeremiah, he lives with his mother in squalid circumstances), Sorrentino's third feature is again centred around the unlikely relationship of a young siren and a superannuated ascetic type, with similarly sleek visuals and sardonic humour. Otherwise, though, this is altogether a darker affair, with barely a character untouched by venality, and indeed most of them are so sketched as to be almost ciphers, so much is the focus on Geremia. So one wonders what the director saw in this shambling, broken-armed (we never do find out why) quasimodo, his head often swathed in napkins lined with sliced potatoes to ward off migraines. A remarkable portrayal by Rizzo, but a curiosity of a movie.
(L'amico di famiglia)
Country: IT/FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 103m
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Cast: Giacomo Rizzo, Laura Chiatti, Gigi Angelillo, Marco Giallini
Synopsis:
A tailor and usurer of the lowest order finances a wedding at which he exacts a terrible price from the bride in order to cancel the debt. She in turn takes an elaborate revenge.
Review:
With a main character so Shakespearean in his miserliness and ethnicity (named Jeremiah, he lives with his mother in squalid circumstances), Sorrentino's third feature is again centred around the unlikely relationship of a young siren and a superannuated ascetic type, with similarly sleek visuals and sardonic humour. Otherwise, though, this is altogether a darker affair, with barely a character untouched by venality, and indeed most of them are so sketched as to be almost ciphers, so much is the focus on Geremia. So one wonders what the director saw in this shambling, broken-armed (we never do find out why) quasimodo, his head often swathed in napkins lined with sliced potatoes to ward off migraines. A remarkable portrayal by Rizzo, but a curiosity of a movie.
(L'amico di famiglia)
Country: IT/FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 103m
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Cast: Giacomo Rizzo, Laura Chiatti, Gigi Angelillo, Marco Giallini
Synopsis:
A tailor and usurer of the lowest order finances a wedding at which he exacts a terrible price from the bride in order to cancel the debt. She in turn takes an elaborate revenge.
Review:
With a main character so Shakespearean in his miserliness and ethnicity (named Jeremiah, he lives with his mother in squalid circumstances), Sorrentino's third feature is again centred around the unlikely relationship of a young siren and a superannuated ascetic type, with similarly sleek visuals and sardonic humour. Otherwise, though, this is altogether a darker affair, with barely a character untouched by venality, and indeed most of them are so sketched as to be almost ciphers, so much is the focus on Geremia. So one wonders what the director saw in this shambling, broken-armed (we never do find out why) quasimodo, his head often swathed in napkins lined with sliced potatoes to ward off migraines. A remarkable portrayal by Rizzo, but a curiosity of a movie.