Please pledge and supprt local filmmaker Jemima Bucknell. 

https://pozible.com/project/stones-short-film  

This post originally appeared at The Essential.

“This isn’t the end of anything. It’s the beginning of everything.”

The Leopard continues to epitomise Italy’s legacy of ambivalence with regard to its unification. It is not only a monument of cinema, but a representative of long-held beliefs that the unsuccessful (or only unceremonious?) attempts to break down or conveniently forget class distinctions, and to assimilate the Southern states into the kingdom of the North comprise a timeline of battles and wars that replace one ruling class with another. Today these states and these social classes, though no longer composed of those noble by birth, are still separated by gaping cultural divides. Based on the historical novel of the same name penned by Sicilian aristocrat Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and adapted for the screen by Luchino Visconti, a descendant of Milanese aristocracy, The Leopardchronicles about two years in the life of a fictional noble Sicilian family following the landing of Garibaldi in Palermo in 1860.

At the centre of the narrative, and seen largely with his thoughts and observations the pivotal point for the story, and for Visconti’s camera, is Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina and patriarch of the illustrious House of Salina. He is played by the blue-eyed, statuesque Burt Lancaster whose physical performance embodies the fading monuments of his noble ancestry and provides a kind of tent pole to so may of Visconti’s deep compositions.

Garibaldi fought to unite Italy under one monarchy, instrumental in the fall of the Bourbon Empire which then ruled most of the Southern regions of Italy, known as the Two Sicilys. It is important to observe that although Garibaldi was a revolutionary, his fight was not one against the concept of a ruling class, but to promote unification under a single empire with Victor Emmanuel, of the House of Savoy, as King.

The introduction of Tancredi, Fabrizio’s nephew, played by Alain Delon, is an integral part of Visconti’s vision. Tancredi is first seen in the reflection of the Fabrizio’s shaving mirror. He is a reflection of his uncle, and also a reflection of the next generation, a modern Italy, but perhaps most importantly, he is reflective, transparent. Tancredi is fickle. He adapts himself to suit his own ambitions, taking up first with the Garibaldini or Redshirts and later allying himself with the Royal army, as an officer, which was an advantage of many of the upper and middle class young men. “He follows the times, that’s all,” argues Fabrizio in a conversation with one of Donnafugata’s peasants. The poor did not join Garibaldi, as he was interested in upholding the social hierarchies, not dismantling them.

There are several dichotomies of social nature at work and how they are represented, and create and collapse on each other is expressed in a melancholic conversation between Don Fabrizio (Burt Lancaster) and a visiting representative of the House of Savoy, paying a visit to seek the Prince as a member of the new Royal senate. The Prince, who does not believe Sicily or its people capable of any real change, attempts to explain that his place as aristocrat would not be possible without Sicily’s poor, “one is derived from the other”.

The film contains one battle scene early on, fought in the slums of Palermo, with Tancredi leading one of several groups of Redshirts against the Bourbon soldiers. In this scene we can also see the peasants of Palermo, including many women, fighting a separate battle against the ruling class, their oppressors. They chase a lone nobleman, possibly the mayor (he wears a top hat and sash) and hang him in the piazza. Here we see the chaos of the two battles that Italy is divided in, one between two monarchies, lead by Garibaldi, and the other (largely overlooked in terms of coverage in the film) of the fight of the plebiscite against the aristocracy. One battle must be won, in order to suppress the other.

Visconti’s frame is one of anarchy and fury, but the two battles occurring, though overlapping each other on the screen, are not in conflict. Tancredi politely requests of a peasant woman, in which direction has his enemy fled.

Visconti uses a recurring motif of chipped and decaying statues, still beautiful and ceremonious, however merely an echo of their former splendour to represent the ruling class. He also, in effect, paints them into frames or has characters moving into their still portrait positions. The only undamaged idols we see are those in chapels. The role of Don Pirrone, the Prince’s priest, is an important one in the film, as he represents the church, that which traverses the social classes, and whom they must ultimately answer to. The church, however, has the same sense of custom of the aristocracy. We see the two united in the chapel at Donnafugata, where the family take their summer vacation. They sit still, covered in dust like relics or ghosts of themselves upon the eve of the referendum. Visconti and Lampedusa were both at odds with what exactly is lost in the overthrow of an aristocracy and there is a large contrast of movement and vibrancy in the final ball scene, and the elliptical dance between the Prince and Tancredi’s middle-class bride to be.

It is perhaps important to consider how Visconti, whose socialist sensibilities were in conflict with his birth right, managed to play out the ironies of Italy’s situation. Of course, he does so from a pedestal, and in effect his relationship to the character of the Prince, who is as often amused as he is saddened by the rise of the middle class, and whose point of view is one of condescension and not affection, is shared by the director to a degree. The film’s comedy is at the expense of the middle class who appear to be striving, and failing, to imitate aristocracy.

Italy remains a divided state with several distinct regions, speaking very different dialects and with separate, culturally rich histories. The Northern regions still think themselves superior, and the Southern regions are largely understood to be under mafia regime. The relationships between North and South remain, in many circles, to be that of a contentious nature. We see this identity crisis played out in programs like The Sopranos and in modern Italian cinema. Most recently Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah (the title suggesting both the “camorra” or mafia, and the biblical story of Gomorrah and Sodom) shows us that the Milanese fashion industry would not be booming without the mafia-run imported Chinese sweatshops in Naples. One continues to derive from the other, and the legacy of i gattopardi endures.

This post originally appeared on TheEssential.com.au 14 November, 2013. http://theessential.com.au/reviews/film/2013/adoration

Set in beachfront condos, somewhere north of Sydney, Adoration is about the years shared between two women, Lil (Naomi Watts) and Ros (Robin Wright) and their love relationships with each other’s teenage sons, Tom (James Frecheville of Animal Kingdom) and Ian (Xavier Samuel). It is based on the late Doris Lessing’s The Grandmothers, part of a short story collection published in 2003.

Lil and Ros are beautiful, fit and foolish women approaching middle age who have lived as neighbours and friends since they were children. They are both creatures of habit, and one shift here or there, usually the interference of men, must be smoothed out, regulated and habituated. They are anchored to their lifestyle, like the buoyant wooden raft that they spend long idyll hours lying about on. Men cannot compete with the bond of these life-long friends. Sons of course are privileged, as they exist in their mothers’ reflections, “did we do that?” asks Ros, marvelling at Ian and Tom’s physique, “they’re like Gods” she replies.

As in a high school movie (Tom and Ian just out of high school) the four of them get drunk one night and Ian makes a move on Ros. Tom, in what is the most interesting moment in the film, decides out of jealousy, hurt, licence or curiosity, we can’t be certain, that he should do the same with Lil. The next day they are all honest about it, and it is no longer taboo. After the initial surprise, the affairs become habit, relationships, until Ros’ son Tom (Lil’s lover) becomes infatuated with a woman his age and Ros decides she too should end it with Ian.

The film relies on some suspense about them being caught out by Ros’ husband Harold (Ben Mendelsohn) or the guy trying to court Lil, but Harold conveniently takes a job in Sydney and the latter decides for himself that Lil and Ros are lesbians. The women have little to say on the subject of their romance. They laugh. They use words like ‘happy’ to describe the experience. We can see plainly their interactions with men, but this great friendship that is the most important of the film, is lived out mostly in wide angles, where their frames are miniature, and their conversation inaudible.

Both Wright and Watts do an exceptional job of appearing bewildered, and much of the dialogue is bewildering. Watts’ use of the word “bloke” is less the Luxembourg-born director Anne Fontaine’s attempt at Australian authenticity and more a reminder of how foreign men are to Lil. Ros similarly refers to her husband by his name, ‘Harold’, so often that it was as though she were meeting him for the first time in each of their scenes together.

Adoration does touch on a potentially lesbian relationship that can’t express itself sexually. The boys inherit the love that their mother’s have for one another, and it is natural that they, in turn, would develop love feelings for these surrogates. It is also natural that Lil and Ros, not being lesbians, should be able to take each other’s handsome young male counterparts to consummate their love. For Lil, Ros and their sons, trying to live within any singular definition of love or desire or sex will end it. This all screams at you for the film’s duration, but it isn’t carried off to any performative effect. The lovers all speak in turn; the criss-cross of the love affair is never mirrored in drama. Watts’ big confessional monologue is given to no one – Wright sits listening, motionless in split dioptre on the edge of the screen.

This post first appeared at TheEssential.com.au 21 December, 2013. http://theessential.com.au/features/objet-dart/gardenias-as-a-symbol-for-love-and-sex-in-david-leans-summertime

Before David Lean was to give new meaning to the word “epic”, the term could easily be ascribed to the love relationships that blossomed full and passionate within his frame. In Summertime, his last film before his triad of wartime sagas, love and sex become a relative warzone for a middle-aged spinster, Jane Hudson (Katharine Hepburn) while holidaying in Venice, Italy.

A film of few characters (based on the play The Time of the Cuckoo by Arthur Laurents), the recurrence of a delicate gardenia, to symbolise their fleeting, floating, wilting romance carries with it limitless possibilities in terms of its representing several characteristics of Miss Hudson herself.

Her lover, Renato Di Rossi (Rossano Brazzi) asks her to choose a flower from the basket of an elderly merchant who cradles a bountiful bouquet across the Piazza San Marco. Jane selects the gardenia to fulfill a girlish fantasy of wearing one to a ball when she was a teenager. She is uncertain, when recalling this wanting of a gardenia, as to the reason for that particular flower. It had to be a gardenia, and she didn’t get it, and still feels this disappointment.

Here we see the flower represents her dissatisfaction with her life and her choices, and the little control that she has over the dreams that are fashioned by her desire. Why the gardenia? Why a rich handsome husband and children? Why Venice? Jane, on arriving with Venice, has acknowledged that her dreams, many of them behind her, are unrealistic. So when she finally gets her gardenia, her romance with Renato, she can only be disappointed by its guise or its eluding her all these years.

Jane accidentally lets slip the flower from her fingers, into the canal. Renato tries to reach it from the stone embankment, but the flower floats away, in a floating city. Jane is hurt again by the unattainable gardenia, but it is in fact its symbolism that drifted from her. She now has Renato.

The gardenia is both a symbol of and a distraction from Jane’s virginity. The metaphor, if seen as metaphor, is easily discernable but it is also the 1950s, and the nature of a woman’s sex life, particularly that of a woman over 40, must be supplanted with beautiful objects. Blanche DuBois, who is often described as a fragile, faded or wilted flower is scarcely remembered as a woman.

There are distinctions between romance and sex, but what exactly it is that Jane wants and what she expects is not always a secret we are privy to. Sex is plain and enormous in Summertime, a shared secret that everyone in Venice is in on. When Jane and Renato have sex, it’s epic. The film’s climax is climax; fireworks flourishing and bursting in the night sky.

The resemblance between Hepburn and the flower is unmistakable. Her dresses frill about her stem legs, and her blouses climb and bend up her slender neck. She wears white, country gowns, decorated like a debutant attending a farm dance. She screams virginity, as if an attempt to conceal it would make her look foolish. She stands idyll by the water, she drinks in the sunshine, she and the gardenia both fall accidentally into the canal, and they both float. Jane and the gardenia also share a foreignness to Italy; she, an American, and the flower native to Oceania, Asia, and a group of countries less often referred to as Australasia.

It is the film’s final scene when Renato again presents her with a gardenia. After a whirlwind romance, Jane decides that it is time to depart and return to her ordinary, lonely life. The decision doesn’t translate to the modern woman, who might seize this newfound love and live it out in all its romantic potential. Jane still does not believe herself to belong to Italy and remains a woman out of sorts with the open love that she associates with Venice. She boards a departing train, looking longingly for Renato who she hopes will see her off. The train departs, and she sees him running toward her. He carries a small box in his hand, extending his reach as he runs to meet her carriage. Jane reaches as well, but the platform ends and Renato stops. Jane the gardenia was always unreachable to him. He lifts from the box a delicate, white gardenia, holding it high in a love salute. Jane sighs gratefully and waves goodbye.