THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
Nanni Moretti’s latest feature film, Towards a bright future, released at the end of April in Italy, presented in stride at the Cannes Film Festival in May, is the work of a free, even liberated man. At 69, he suspends the fatalistic turn that his work had ended up taking, in particular with the most somber Tre piani (released in 2021). He even reconnects with the character of yesteryear, the grumpy, quirky cabochard, fighting against everything, which he himself interpreted, and in whose procrastination the Italian left has long admired itself. Formerly named Michele Apicella, this alter ego is here renamed Giovanni. Either the real first name that hides under the diminutive “Nanni”, signaling a clear rapprochement between the filmmaker and his double on the screen.
In fact, Giovanni is an elderly director, who embarks on the shooting of a period film: Italy in 1956, when echoes of the popular insurrection which bursts in Hungary against the communist regime are heard. . In Quarticciolo, in the Roman suburbs, the local cell of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) receives a Hungarian circus troupe, welcomed with open arms by Ennio (Silvio Orlando), editor at Unita, and his wife, Vera (Barbora Bobulova). The same evening, the entry of Soviet tanks into Budapest and the crushing of the revolution are announced. Vera positions herself in favor of the rioters and sees there the perfect opportunity for the PCI to escape from Soviet tutelage. Ennio, an embarrassed political executive, locks himself up in his contradictions, never to get out.
However, this bitter and serious scenario does not really hold water, Giovanni is detached from it while everything cracks around him. His wife and regular producer, Paola (Margherita Buy), leaves him to work on fashionable ultra-violent thrillers. His French co-producer (Mathieu Amalric), short of cash, soon finds himself in handcuffs. And to top it off, his composer daughter (Valentina Romani) marries a septuagenarian diplomat. Decidedly, the contemporary world persists in not turning round, up to the decision-makers of Netflix, a skewer of human robots, finding that its script lacks a touch “what the fuck” – which leaves him speechless.
Italian version by Sacha Guitry
In the shoes of Giovanni, a recalcitrant boomer up against the order of things, Moretti is no longer exactly the histrion of yesteryear, and to his performance is added an additional dimension: the thickness of age – postures stiffer, slower flow, temporary absences and syncopated tempo – which makes it all the more overwhelming. In fact, the filmmaker-actor has never looked so much like an Italian version of Sacha Guitry: mastermind of a fiction in the making, directing his film from the inside, intervening in each shot as if to modify the lesson or add their comment to it.
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