GIANNI AMELIO: LORD OF THE ANTS/IL SIGNORE DELLE FORMICHE (2022) - OPEN ROADS: NEW ITALIAN CINEMA 2023


LUIGI LO CASCIO AND LEONARDO MALTESE IN LORD OF THE ANTS

Lives destroyed by homophobia in Sixties Italy

This complex and interesting though clearly flawed film recreates an important but largely forgotten court case of Italy in the 1960's that delineates the country's uneasy relationship with homosexuality. It features the prolific Luigi Lo Cascio as the accused Aldo Braibanti, an intellectual who at the end of the 1960s was convicted of the crime of "plagio" or grooming of Ettore Tagliaferri, a young man who frequented the Tower, Braibanti's cultural center. As Ettore, there is a stunning performance by newcomer Leonardo Maltese. Counterpoint is provided by an easygoing performance as Unità reporter Ennio Scribani, who covers the case, by Elio Germano.

Lo Cascio, Montese and Germano are compelling and this is a moving, disturbing film. However, as I have learned from Italian sources, notably Raffaele Meale in Quinlan, there are inexplicable alterations and things left out in Gianni Amelio's telling of events. Amelio's freedom with the context of the case - the communist paper's coverage and the support of Braibanti by prominent artists and intellectuals - is hard to understand and creates reservations about the film. So does its style and mood, which is languid and feels rooted in the very backwardness of earlier decades. This film is not quite up to the level of great Amelio work like Così ridevano, Lamerica, and Le chiavi di casa.

But the essential point is clear. Modern Italy, right in the time of worldwide civil rights revolts, was still mired in the fascist aftereffects (Mussolini did not even allow the word "homosexual" to be used because he would not admit there were such people in Italy) and the oppressive "morality" of the Catholic church. Indeed the concept of mentally subjugating another person, designated by the "plagio" law only evoked then and never again, was not just a backward idea but a positively medieval, as well as fascist one, and this was the summer of 1968.

The irate bourgeois mother and the more conservative older brother feel like familiar figures from Italian cinema of decades past. Lord of the Ants sometimes gets mired in its old fashioned, clunky beats. Even though we see young demonstrators on the street supporting Braibanti, the conventionality of Lord of the Ants seems little to acknowledge them, to take too seriously the archaic, repressive viewpoints expressed in the trial.

On the other hand, Braibanti is a complex and remarkable figure here, a playwright, poet but perhaps in his heart of hearts a scientist, specifically a myrmecologist, or ant expert, whose Tower was a community of young people gathered around him and drawn in by his energy and almost renaissance multiple accomplishments. He inspires them. But he also does seem to manipulate them and want to gather a cult around himself. He yells at his young charges. He isn't a pleasant or likable man at all. But Ettore isn't a minor and he both loves and is inspired by Braibanti. We see a love here, a sexual one, between a young and a middle-aged man: and this is a bold element for any Italian film however conventional the rest of it is.

The events that play out lead to the destruction of both men. Ettore's mother imprisons him in a program to "cure" him of his homosexuality that includes a horrible series of electroshock treatments. Ettore becomes a ghost of his former self. And yet he never loses his love and admiration for Braibanti and still says is the most important person in his life and now knows that his family are now his enemies. Aldo and Ettore have one final rather distant but friendly meeting.

As played by Elio Germano, Ennio Scribani, the correspondent for the Rome communist paper Unità assigned to the "plagio" court case that leads Braibanti to be sentenced to nine years imprisonment (though it is reduced) has a double function in the film. He is an easygoing, good humored, perpetually hat-wearing and tieless fellow un-hampered by Catholicism or conservative morality. Thus he provides a balance to the overwrought views of everybody else. (This somewhat simplistic depiction contrasts with Germano's complex and vulnerable portrayal of Giacomo Leopardi in the 2014 Mario Martone biopic also shown in this year's Open Roads Italian film series.) Scribani's presence also enables Amelio to get in a dig at the communist newspaper, whose editor the film represents as a creep without liberal ideas who, somewhat late in the game, expresses regret at having assigned Scribani to the trial and encourages him to resign from the paper, which he does. But while in the film Scribani isn't allowed to use the word "homosexual" or even "communist" in his articles, which are sometimes trashed or replaced by the obnoxious editor, the Quinlin article points out this isn't true.

Despite its flaws Lord of the Ants is still an impressive depiction of this important case. The screenplay keeps the complexity of the issues, especially the fact that Braibanti, though wrongly accused, is a hard man to like and also the fact that young Ettore is rather confused. The film shines in the performances of Lo Cascio as the forceful but unappealing Braibanti and Germano as the smiling, independent-minded journalist Scribani. The revelation is Leonardo Maltese who as Ettore Tagliaferri, the young gay man destroyed by his own family, is like an open wound, an immensely appealing actor we are likely to see again.

Lord of the Ants/Il signore delle formiche, 134 mins., debuted at Venice Sept. 6, 2022 and opened in Italy Sept. 8. It also showed at Busan, Rio, Chicago, and five other international festivals. Screened for this review as part of the June 1-8, 2023 Film at Lincoln Center-Cinecittà series Open Roads: New Italian Cinema.
Monday, June 5 at 6:00pm
Wednesday, June 7 at 3:00pm

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.