Cannes this year can be described as a big year for Italian films. "The Happy Lazzaro" won the Best Screenplay Award, and "The Kennel", which finally won the Cannes Best Actor Award, will also represent Italy in next year's Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
The title of the film is "Fright," but don't get me wrong, it's not a horror film, but a rather ironic and tense social fable wrapped in a crime genre film.
The story is very simple: Marcelo, an honest and honest divorced man, lives in a dirty and chaotic suburban town near the sea in southwestern Italy. He runs a small shop that grooms dogs and takes good care of his dogs every day. good. Marcelo often plays football in the evenings with nearby friends and seems to have a good relationship and life. But behind the life of duty, Marcelo is a drug dealer, relying on selling cocaine to support his daughter's luxury vacation at sea.
Marcelo's friend Simon, who was recently released from prison, was also a loyal client, but he stopped paying him for a long time, and instead threatened him with fists. With Simon's intensifying threats and control, Marcelo blindly relented, but things finally took a turn after Simon's crime. Marcelo, who needed money, didn't get the promised share from Simon, but only had a face that was bruised and bruised. He was determined to take revenge...
If I hadn't known the results of Cannes in advance and watched this movie with a "spoiler" mood, it would be really hard for me to think that this movie, which didn't even show the male protagonist's face in the opening scene for two minutes, would be praised in the end. Winner of the Best Actor Award.
But as the rhythm of the movie gets better and better, the image of the male protagonist becomes more three-dimensional and plump.
Shortly after the opening of the movie, Simon, a friend who was released from prison, became addicted to drugs and asked Marcelo for drugs. Marcelo, who had been accompanying his daughter for a second, tried his best to maintain a little self-esteem and begged him to leave. The image of an honest man who is afraid of his friends and wants to please both sides immediately comes to life.
From the outset, we have a strong sense that the character of Marcelo is alone. From start to finish, he seemed to live in a profound loneliness that he didn't even know he knew about.
He is especially warm and protective to his daughter who lives with his mother after the divorce, and he is resigned to Simon, a gangster who doesn't take him as a true friend. At night, he sits on the sofa with his dog and watches TV while eating.
Perhaps the most absurd sense of loneliness is best illustrated by the play about the "illusion" at the end.
Marcelo, who was about to burn his corpse, saw that his former friends were playing football in the stadium not far away, so he desperately dragged the body of Simon who had ruined his life, but when he approached the stadium again, it was empty. Yelling and running seemed like a dream.
This reminds me of the end of Antonioni's "Zoom":
The male protagonist watched a group of hippies play a tennis game that didn't really exist, and he also unknowingly participated in it and picked up the tennis ball that didn't exist.
The game Marcelo saw was unreal, so was he eager to use this revenge murder to win back his fame and normal life?
Marcelo's friend Simon, a cold-blooded boxer with a habit of using violence to solve problems, makes everyone in the community feel angry and afraid to speak out.
Marcelo was kind to him without a bottom line, responsive to his needs, even at the expense of his own freedom.
I can't help but wonder, what was it that attracted the good old Marcelo? Does his attitude also symbolize the human morbid worship of primitive violence?
Simon escapes after committing a robbery, leaving Marcelo in a mess.
At the police station, the seasoned Inspector Xiaozhi moved with emotion and asked Marcelo to sign the agreement so he could go, and the police had good reason to arrest Simon directly.
"Home or prison, you have no choice." Marcelo's throat rolled slightly, his eyes were gray, and no one knew what he was thinking.
"Don't think about it, sign it."
"No!"
So he went to prison, holding the prison uniform with the usual low-brow pleasing to the eye. And the Marcelo-style tragedy from depression to outbreak, is it a cocoon, or is it society?
The director is only at the end, with an elevated fixed camera overlooking the bleak land coldly.
Towards the end of the film, Marcelo embarks on his long-awaited plan of revenge. The scene of luring Simon to the kennel once again reflects the actor's actor-level acting skills.
Looking at it, we can no longer tell whether Marcelo's nod and bow to Simon at this moment is due to his character or his perfect acting skills, and how much of him is playing the old good Marcelo as always, only from his calmness. The undercurrent of anger was faintly felt beneath the exterior.
Finally, his anger and humiliation were fully released, and the honest man who used to be timid and fearful is now calmly looking at the pool of blood in front of him, and the fear of violence has become the pleasure of tasting violence.
Violence can kill, as can revenge.
In terms of audio-visual language, it is still director Mateo's iconic slightly shaky handheld photography and fixed shots from God's perspective, creating an atmosphere that is both real and empty.
The eerie, dark tones that catch the eye from the start, combined with the night scenes for most of the time, immerse the whole film in a lifeless atmosphere, and it's hard not to let the viewer notice the environment in which the story takes place.
The small town where Marcelo and Simon live is, in a sense, the epitome of a "failed society":
The economy is stagnant, people's lives are monotonous and lifeless, young people are keen to go to nightclubs for fun; the streets are dirty and uncleaned, although it is not a tourist destination by the sea, Marcelo would rather take the risk and earn money to take his daughter on a yacht vacation to the sea.
You can even smell unmistakably primal in a place like this - femininity is minimal, androgens fill every corner, with motorcycles, sports and gangs for manly gratification.
Everyone wants to be tougher to protect themselves, and give three points to the tougher. At the same time, people crave money more than anything else.
Director Matteo Garrone made his early career making documentaries, and he was fascinated and adept at portraying the underclass of Italian society.
The pursuit of realism has always been one of the fine traditions of Italian cinema, which is also reflected in director Matteo.
Mateo was born in a family of literature and art. His father was a drama critic and his mother was a photographer. However, Mateo was very interested in the complex and brutal underlying reality. Most of his works are based on the southern Italian city of Naples and its surrounding areas. A world completely different from developed northern Italy.
The satire and critique of contemporary Italian society are reflected in the kaleidoscope of the fate of the little people at the bottom or underground, and you can always feel the thrilling behind the black humor.
In 2008, his film "Gomorra", which tells the story of the Mafia in Naples, Italy, was shortlisted in the Cannes main competition unit, and since then the "Cannes main competition regular" mode has been opened.
"Gomorrah" uses a "documentary-like" shooting method, and even casts real members of the mafia to star in, throwing the unsettling reality to the audience's eyes.
In 2012, his self-written and directed feature film "Reality", which raised the issue of media and human relations, was shortlisted for the main competition in Cannes, and finally won the Grand Jury Prize again.
In 2015, he transformed into fantasy and magical realism, and his new work "The Story of a Story" was once again shortlisted in the main competition unit of Cannes. The film is adapted from the Neapolitan language fairy tale collection "Five Days", which has some shadows from Pasolini's "Ten Days" and "One Thousand and One Nights".
This time, "The Kennel Fright", although there is no obvious hint of the background of the story, the actual shooting location is a seaside town in the Campania region in southern Italy. Its capital is Naples, which also directly alludes to southern Italy. social status quo.
Marcello Fonte, who won the Best Actor award for his superb performance in this film, was very low-key before this. Although he has worked hard in the European film industry for a long time, he has not done many works, except for the one he directed in 2015. Outside of "Flying Donkey", he has never acted as the male lead in a movie.
This time, it is not unfortunate to meet Marcelo, the protagonist who is almost tailor-made for him in "The Kennel", half of Cannes' direct director Mateo. He also proved himself with his three-pointed and relaxed performance.
"The Kennel" is not necessarily the best work of director Mateo, but there is no doubt about the maturity of its photography, performance, and scene scheduling, and the exquisite political metaphor contained in the simple and straightforward story is also ready to come out.
At the end, Marcelo, gasping for breath, sat alone in an empty abandoned playground like a trapped beast who had just finished fighting, his eyes once again becoming as gray as the sky above his head. The restrained shots also complicated my feelings. There is a sense of detachment and a sense of sympathy, even mingled with a vague and strange hope.
It seems that tomorrow, without Simon, he can start a peaceful life with dogs, daughters, and friends again.
This article first published "Adventure Movie"
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