European Films

Ugly horoscopes and uglier twists of fate test the bonds of friendship for a group of polysexual Roman 40-somethings in Ferzan Ozpetek’s Saturno contro (Saturn in Opposition). The handsomely made feature of the Italo-Turkish director feels like a return to safer and more familiar waters after the religious flight of fancy that was his excellent Cuore sacro (Sacred Heart), though some of that feature’s preference for an investigation into what makes people tick over carefully plotted melodrama has thankfully remained. Though not perfectly paced and certainly too long at 110 minutes, Saturno contro is nevertheless a worthwhile affirmation of everyone’s need to be loved and understood by at least one person (and possibly more).

 

In his 2001 feature Le fate ignoranti (His Secret Life), Ozpetek told the story of a doctor and widow played by Margherita Buy who discovers that her husband had led a double life and was part of a colourful group of outcasts that rallied around a gay man dying of aids. The group included her husband’s male lover, played by Stefano Accorsi, and a Turkish immigrant with the face of Serra Yilmaz.

 

In Saturno contro, it is again illness and death that reunites these three actors and various others, though the makeshift family of outcasts has now become a respectable group of middle class people who gather in the home of successful, 40-ish fairytale writer Davide (Pierfrancesco Favino) and his strapping boyfriend Lorenzo (Luca Argentero), ten years his junior. The couple’s friends include Neval, a Turkish translator with the face of Serra Yilmaz and the married couple Antonio, a bank employee played by Stefano Accorsi, and Margherita Buy's Angelica, a psychologist.

 

Neval’s police officer husband (Filippo Timi); a beautiful cokehead (Ambra Angiolini); her occasional -- and bisexual -- bed partner Paolo (Michelangelo Tommaso) and the older, somewhat cantankerous but always honest Sergio (Ennio Fantastichini) complete the dinner table seating arrangements for the frequent get-togethers at Lorenzo and Davide's apartment in the centre of Rome.

 

Ozpetek neatly sets up his large group of friends and their problems, of which the erupting domestic battle between Antonio -- who is secretly seeing another woman (Isabella Ferrari, looking better than ever) but feels he should tell his wife -- and  Angelica is the most captivating, mainly because of the excellent work of the actors and the relatively large amount of screen time they are given. Ozpetek’s observing script, co-written as usual with Gianni Romoli, here brings some originality and truth to what could have been a trite melodramatic storyline.

 

One of the lessons Ozpetek clearly learned in Cuore sacro is that not everything needs to be on screen for it to have its impact, which he uses here in two carefully choreographed instances that are all the stronger for it. When Antonio returns to an ongoing dinner party at Davide and Lorenzo’s after a quick visit to his mistress, he finds the house empty. Cut to the hospital, where the person who fainted and went into a coma during Antonio’s absence is kept off screen for the duration of his stay there.

 

This smart editing does not extend to the entire film however, which suffers from an uneven rhythm from the scenes in which the friends’ gathering place has been moved from Davide and Lorenzo’s apartment to the hospital corridors. The closing scenes especially seem to struggle between a suggestion that friends will get one another through everything and the idea that, finally, every person is an island. This note of indecision fails to bring any real sense of closure -- an explanatory voice over notwithstanding.

 

Cinematography by Ozpetek regular Gianfilippo Corticelli is luminous and glides through the lives of the characters, though some fancy camerawork during a scene in which Davide breaks down at the seaside seems unnecessarily flashy. Music by Neffa is emphatic, as in all of Ozpetek’s films, while acting is excellent across the board, including from the bit players, with Fantastichini, Milena Vukotic's hospital nurse ("I get a little foul-mouthed after 3 a.m.") and Lunetta Savino as the mother of one of the characters as the standouts.

 

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