European Films

 

Ferzan Ozpetek returns to familiar grounds for his new film Saturno contro, which will be released in Italy tomorrow (Friday). After the artistic success of Cuore sacro (Sacred Heart), that was in many ways an atypical Ozpetek film, the Italy-based Turkish director returns to the themes of his biggest hits Hamam (Steam: The Turkish Bath), Le fate ignoranti (His Secret Life) and La finestra di fronte (Facing Window) for yet another exploration of love both straight and gay in the Italian capital. For Saturno contro (the title is a pun on the position of Saturn in one’s horoscope), Ozpetek again reunites with Stefano Accorsi, Margherita Buy and Serra Yilmaz, the three of his stars from what may be described as his most Ozpetekian film of all: Le fate ignoranti. They are joined by Isabella Ferrari, Pierfrancesco Favino and newcomer Luca Argentero for what might be described as Le fate ignoranti: Reloaded.

 

Favino (Il Libanese from Romanzo criminale/Crime Novel) and Argentero (a former Italian Big Brother candidate) are Davide, a famous writer of fairy tales, and Lorenzo, a young and ambitious publicist. The couple’s home often hosts get-togethers for a group of friends who were once colleagues. Antonio (Accorsi) is now an insecure bank employee who cheats on his wife Angelica (Buy), a successful psychologist, with Laura (Ferrari). Nival (Yilmaz) is a Turkish translator married to a timid police officer (Filippo Timi). Sergio (Ennio Fantastichini) is the sarcastic ex-lover of Davide, while Roberta (Ambra Angiolini) is a young girl interested in drugs and astrology. Paolo (Michelangelo Tomasso), an aspiring young writer of uncertain sexuality who is interested in medicine, completes this alternative family.

 

This new family seems like an update of the alternative family that gathered in the apartment of Accorsi’s character in Le fate ignoranti seven years ago. The characters of Saturno contro have aged a bit and are not as marginalised as they were in the previous ensemble film; much like Ozpetek has moved further into the mainstream of Italian filmmaking and gays and alternative families have become a more accepted (and more well-off) part of society. In Le fate ignoranti, aids was a subject that touched several characters, but in Saturno contro illness and death are certainly present but not in the form of the “gay cancer”, again reflecting the changes that have occurred over time (in Ozon’s Le temps qui reste/Time to Leave a similar thing happened: a gay man faces a terminal illness but it is not aids).

 

Whether Saturno contro will top his most successful film La finestra di fronte (which reaped not only numerous awards at home and abroad but also brought in over €10 million in Italy alone) will be clear after the film premieres in Italy on Friday. For the moment, it is clear that Ozpetek has become one of the major new voices in Italian cinema, able to command talent and resources for films that reflect changes in the fabric of Italian -- and European -- society at large.

 

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