“ Commander I liked it, I applauded it. » These were the words of the vice-president of the Italian Council of Ministers, Matteo Salvini, after the screening which opened the Venice Film Festival on August 30. His presence on the red carpet was all the more commented on, in the Peninsula, as the feature film by Edoardo De Angelis is a barely veiled response to the migration policy put in place by the far-right tribune, then that he was Minister of the Interior, between June 2018 and September 2019. And that it was, moreover, the first of six Italian films selected in competition – you had to go back to 1982 to find such a massive transalpine presence on the lagoon.
Commander immerses us in an all too rare subgenre of war film, the submarine film. We are in 1940, the war is brewing. THE Cappellini is a flagship of the fascist fleet, and its captain, Salvatore Todaro (Pierfrancesco Favino), has orders to torpedo any allied boat. An injunction that he followed to the letter, until a raft of Belgian shipwreck men appeared, whose ship he had previously destroyed. Against all expectations, he brings the survivors on board his submarine, tensing up a crew already quite under tension. In the crucible of Cappellini This cooks up, both literally and figuratively, collective identities: that of the young Italian nation; that, in the making, of the European community; and that, immemorial and universal, of seafarers.
Inspired by a true story, the fable is worth first of all for its moral, transparently topical: as fascist as they were, these Italians had more heart than those who, three-quarters of a century later, refused to bring similar help to similar shipwrecked people. Should we see, in the applause of Matteo Salvini, a way of beating his guilt? Beyond these political audacity, Commander illustrates, at its best, the rediscovered ambition of transalpine cinema, which no longer hesitates to play the big budget card, supported by a few producers (The Apartment Pictures, Indigo Cinema, Wild Side Films, etc.) shamelessly eyeing the market international.
Scorsesian facial expressions
Like so many of his compatriots recently, from Nanni Moretti to Marco Bellocchio or Luca Guadagnino, De Angelis shot most of his film in the Roman Cinecittà studios, which are gradually regaining their former glory. They are at the heart, moreover, of Finally the Alba, by Saverio Costanzo. The filmmaker makes it a theater of horrors and splendors, through the candid gaze of a young Roman woman who is invited by chance to the set of a peplum, in the 1950s. Imagine The White Sheik (1952), by Federico Fellini (1920-1993), reviewed through the prism of #metoo and the fantasy of Constanzo’s sister-in-law, Alice Rohrwacher, and you will have the other great Italian success of this Mostra.
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