European Films

 

Despite having two high profile film festivals in early autumn in the form of the Venice and the Rome Film Festivals, this year several highly anticipated Italian titles failed to show up at either festival, including Riccardo Milani's biopic Piano Solo, with Kim Rossi Stuart as the tortured musical genius Luca Flores; Giuliano Montaldo's San Pietroburgo with Miki Manojlovic as Dostoyevsky and Roberto Faenza's I vicerè (The Viceroys), an adaptation of the fin-de-siècle novel by Federico De Roberto. I vicerè, which premieres in Italy today, is the most famous work of the novelist and  recounts the disillusionment of a noble family in the period between the Risorgimento and Italy's unification in the middle of the 19th century. 

 

The absence of Faenza's sumptuous adaptation of the novel from the Venice line-up was no surprise, since his previous film, I giorni dell'abbondono (Days of Abandonment), was received with whistles and boos on the Lido in 2005. But its absence from the Roman Film Fest is more puzzling, with the director stating that the film was considered by the festival to be too direct a critique on the Italian political concept of transformiso (a frequent swaying of convictions to maintain political unity), still very much in use in Italian politics today. The festival, however, has denied these charges, stating that only artistic merits and not subject matter were taken into consideration when deciding on its selection.

 

Whatever the case, it seems clear from the debate that Faenza has intended to make an overtly political film with a clear contemporary resonance that just happens to be set in the middle of the 19th century. De Roberto's drama  starts with the death of Princess Teresa of the Sicilian branch of the House of Bourbon, with the Uzeda family, descending from the Viceroys of Spain, finding themselves reunited for the royal funeral, which will ignite the struggle for her inheritance as told through the eyes of the youngest heir of the Uzeda, Consalvo (Matthieu Legavre as a child, Alessandro Preziosi as an adult). The story involves local and national politicians and religious leaders and was considered too hot to handle not only when it originally appeared: it was censored for over a hundred years.

 

The film is an Italian-Spanish co-production and also stars Alessandro Preziosi, Lando Buzzanca, Cristiana Capotondi, Assumpta Serna and Jorge Calvo. During shooting, extra material was shot for a two-episode television version that will be shown on Italian public television next year.

 

• visit the official website of the film for the trailer and pictures