'Whale!' Whale!' These words interrupt Marco and Marie’s flirting on a sunny beach in San Francisco in the film Summertime by Gabriele Muccino. As if in a video for Greenpeace, on the horizon we see the magnificent sea mammal. In contemporary Italian film, Muccino resembles that enormous whale. Many would be happier if they did not notice him, but his bulky appearance id simply here and it cannot go unnoticed. This film evokes a more relaxed version of Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, featuring two accidental teen tourists, members of the Roman bourgeois class, who enter the life of a homosexual couple during their vacation in Frisco where they look for sex and provocation. Even though Muccino introduces the character of a new loser whom we have not yet encountered in his more proper stories, and whose masturbation outings enter the zone of Gaspar Noe, the author’s creative process is quite reactionary. Of course, Muccino’s feeling of freedom that is becoming programmatically cool is provided by the brothers Carlo and Enrico Vanzina in a much more honest and raw manner (code: Miami Beach), with the exception of their populist approach not being as arthouse-chic. Thus in the key scene of a dinner Marco is silenced after he tries to minimize the cliché Italian-style syntagm, emphasizing that Italy also means ‘mafia, corruption and economic crisis’.

Nevertheless, this same whale dives out again in the comedy In guerra per amore, author project of the Sicilian film maker with the artistic name Pif (his real name is Pierfrancesco Diliberto ad in one of the earlier reviews of Italian films we showed his film The Mafia Kills Only in Summer), whose fairytale-like melancholy of the magic (neo)realism owes a lot to the tandem Benigni/Cerami and their TV version of Pinocchio. However, instead of Gepetto’s whale we have a boy and his flying donkey. Even though some flat metaphors cannot be excused (scene with Mussolini’s statue), the film features an interesting historical premise according to which a captain of the American allied army discovers secret ‘contracts’ between the American government and the Sicilian mafia, sponsored by Lucky Luciano. This explicit j'accuse moment in the finale of Pif’s film, ironically evokes the ghosts of the first Italian Democratic-Christian politicians who profited from the pact between the American government and the Sicilian mafia (Democratic-Christian love for that same mafia is eternal, which is proven later in the notorious Andreotti case). Thus In guerra per amore can be regarded as a prequel to the TV series '1992' starring Stefano Accorsi. Naturally, the film evokes the atmosphere of the good old 'commedie all'Italiana' (the story of Pif’s film takes place in the same time as the story of Comencini’s legendary comedy Tutti a casa). Even though Pif introduces the character of the shrewd hero who has gathered enough strength to achieve a higher goal, the author’s biggest risk boils down to revealing the expressive current relevance of his work whose form is utterly retro and ‘old-fashioned’.

If Muccino’s bourgeois teen heroes went all the way to Frisco, the Protagonists of the irresistible road comedy by Fabio Mollo Il padre d'Italia travel from Turin to Bagna Calabria, the same small home-town of Loredana Berte whose soundtrack the author uses in this film. Mia is an energetic girl who, in spite of her pregnancy, lives one day at a time and does not have a steady home. Paolo is a lonely young man, paralyzed by his unhappy past and haunted by the insecure present which he hates. These two lost souls meet one night and discover in each other what the other person is looking for and become inseparable. Il padre d'Italia is a film that counts on its colors and sounds. Rhythms of music clubs and dark rooms. It is a film that goes down towards the warmth and light. Mia transforms into a woman. Her belly grows and she becomes somewhat of a Mother Nature as well as Paolo’s surrogate mother, at the same time seductive and luminous. She is the incarnation of all strong women from Calabria. Mollo portrays the Italian south as simultaneously artificial and melancholic in its contrasts.

Is commedia all'Italiana today confined to the esthetics of 'solita commediola'? Is it really merely a 'mere little comedy' and nothing more, to which Marco Giusti refers to in his recent polemic article? Like Muccini’s whale that surfaces in the Frisco bay, there is some damn symbolism in the other bridge crossed by the barefoot Fabio De Luigi, walking towards the eerie little town Civita di Bagnoregio, which has become the favorite destination of meta-organic and New Age eco tourists. His voice of the narrator in the comedy Questione di carma by the director Edoardo Falcone, provides us with enough information to be able to understand the skit with the guru Philippe Leroy that follows. In fact, maybe Leroy is the most precious jewel that the author gave us.  He is an actor who was the star of the Italian giallos in the 1970’s and who displayed his bewitching torso in Becker’s noir prison drama The Hole, as well as monstrosity in Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter. Also, there is the figure of our beloved Elio Germano, even though he is now not capable of emanating those same sordid grotesques that we expect from his mask. Therefore Falcone tries to do everything in his power to draw nearer to the retro cannons of the avanspettacolo, Italian variety hall from the era of Edoardo De Filippo, Toto and Anna Magnana, incarnated by the legendary Stefania Sandrelli in the scene of dinner in Giacomo’s house. The film is heavily garnished by the esthetics of Hollywood bromance, so it is possible that one day soon there happens its Hollywood remake, directed by for example Jonathan Levine.

After the feature film the Flowers of Kirkuk, which we have seen recently in the program 'Borders' devoted to the issue of refuges, Iranian-Kurdish filmmaker with the Italian address Fariborz Kamkari directed the documentary Aqua e zucchero about the famous cinematographer Carlo Di Palma. It focuses on his 'intimate journey' with his wife Adriana Chiesa, who is more famous in the area of international film sales. The film follows his early age when he was a fifteen year old boy who worked with Visconti, all the way to the time when he was a world-wide famous director of photography who worked with Wenders, Antonioni, Bertolucci, Loach and Allen. However, the most beautiful segment of the film is his first meeting with the legendary Sven Nykvist. (Dragan Rubeša)