After the worldwide success of La vita è bella (Life is Beautiful) in which he juxtaposed role-playing and comedy with the harrowing events at a Nazi concentration camp, and the cinematic side-dish that was his adaptation of Pinocchio, Italian actor-director Roberto Benigni returns with La tigre e la neve (The Tiger and the Snow), a comedy about poetry set during the recent American- led invasion of Iraq. Though very much in the vein of La vita è bella in its combination of the horrors of war as a backdrop for comedy, Benigni never quite reaches that brilliance or tight narrative with his new offering and people who may have seen the WWII film recently may recognise so much of his shtick that La tigre e la neve could feel rather uncreative or even repetitive. For all others and especially the true Benigni fans (if those exist), this new film offers a good deal of chuckles and an excellent supporting turn from French thespian Jean Reno as the Arab poet Fuad.

Benigni’s real-life spouse, actress Nicoletta Braschi (who starred as his second wife in La vita è bella) again stars as his object of affection, though this time around her character Vittoria, an editor of Fuad’s poetry, seems less interested and more annoyed by Benigni than in any of her previous incarnations. If anything, Benigni’s character, the divorced poet and university professor Atillio di Giovanni, could be considered a comic-poetic stalker since he keeps following Vittoria around to convince her of his love for her - all the way to war-torn Iraq! In a somewhat long first section set in Italy, he tries to woo Vittoria and gets some unsuspected aid from his university colleague Nancy, with whom he has had a one night stand in the past. In a not particularly original but nevertheless perfectly choreographed and very funny scene, Atillio succeeds in bringing Vittoria to his apartment and even keep her entertained for a while.   

 

Atillio’s friendship and Vittoria’s working relationship with the Arab poet Fuad takes the action to Iraq, where Vittoria has been badly hurt in an explosion on a business visit to Fuad that coincided with the recent American-led invasion of the country (her love for poetry knows no bounds; I assume all the other literary editors would have left the country by the time of the invasion). Atillio succeeds in getting to Iraq by very dubious means. Getting to a country in which a war has just broken out cannot be resolved at a regular airport as Atillio finds out. Once arrived, he will try to take care of Vittoria, who is in a very bad condition, with the aid of Fuad.

 

Benigni and co-writer Vincenzo Cerami never really reach the continuous perfection of La vita..., instead providing several excellent set pieces (involving Atillio surviving a military blockade and a mine field for example) which are fun on themselves but fail to become an integral and logical part of the film’s narrative. As a result the stretches that connect one set piece to the next feel like roughly sown-on patches on your favourite pair of dungarees; they get the job done and provide for some colour but they are not a comfy fit.

 

Something which does work very well is the film’s occasional venture into darker territory, especially with the way Benigni and Reno deal with Fuad’s fate. This somehow seems to redress the balance of the absurdity of making a comedy set during the Iraqi invasion. These moments of sobriety give the whole film less whimsy and eventually more force than La vita è bella had, at least in terms of saying something about the human condition. While the film may ramble narratively speaking when in Iraq, its closing scenes again set in Italy draw together all of the narrative strands in a satisfying manner and even hold a few surprises.

 

Benigni thus seems to have re-invented himself in a mostly satisfying manner. Despite a weaker overall narrative force in its middle section and without the feeling that we are watching something new, La tigre e la neve still works about as well as we have come to expect from the Tuscan comic.

 

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