Luciano (Aniello Arena) and Giusy (Giuseppina Cervizzi) celebrate in Matteo Garrone’s REALITY
REALITY (Matteo Garrone, 2012)
Angelika Film Center
18 West Houston St. at Mercer St.
Opens Friday, March 15
www.oscilloscope.net
www.angelikafilmcenter.com
Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone creates intriguing works that walk the fine line between fact and fiction, fantasy and reality. In January 2009, his Cannes Grand Prix winner Gomorrah, a gangster epic based on a nonfiction novel, was screened at the Maysles Institute, a cinema dedicated to documentaries, as part of a series called “How Real Is This? (Truth Telling in Fiction Films).” His follow-up, Reality, which won the 2012 Cannes Grand Prix, takes that concept to another level, with equally intoxicating results. Inspired by a true story, the dark comedy follows the trials and tribulations of Naples fishmonger and family man Luciano (Aniello Arena), who does whatever he can to help support his wife (Loredana Simioli) and kids, including selling robotic cookers to old ladies on the sly. When one of his daughters begs him to audition at a mall for a spot on the next season of the Italian Big Brother (Grande Fratello) reality television show, he initially has no desire to do so, but he eventually caves to make his daughter happy. Soon, however, he becomes obsessed with being chosen for the program, stalking former housemate Enzo (Raffaele Ferrante), a Buster Keaton-esque figure who has become a beloved star, and believing that any stranger could be someone from the show, judging his personal qualities to decide whether he’s a worthy candidate. Luciano looks both inward and outward as his idea of what’s real gets turned inside out.
Matteo Garrone (foreground) melds fantasy and reality in latest Grand Prix winner at Cannes
Garrone and cinematographer Marco Onorato begin Reality with a long, gorgeous helicopter shot that eventually leads viewers into the Grand Hotel La Sonrisa, an over-the-top wedding factory where people’s fantasies can become reality. Garrone goes back and forth between the bright, bold colors of La Sonrisa and the fabled Cinecittà studios in Rome and the harsh grays of the local fish market in Naples, furthering the difference between the two worlds Luciano lives in. In his film debut, Arena — who began acting in prison, where he is currently serving twenty-eight years for double murder — is a revelation, handling what could have been a melodramatic role with an innate understanding and beguiling ease. Influenced by such films as Fellini’s The White Sheik, Luchino Visconti’s Bellissima, and Roman Polanski’s The Tenant, Garrone mixes nonprofessional and established actors in real locations, adding elements of classic Italian neo-Realism as Luciano’s fantasy world slowly overtakes him. Reality is about a lot more than reality television; it’s about escape, it’s about family, and it’s about people’s need to find a place for themselves in our ever-changing society.