A grim world that we must nevertheless face

It is well known – or something you realise after attending enough film festivals – that the day’s screenings are grouped according to thematic affinities. Yesterday’s theme was ‘how ugly the world is’, featuring ‘Un bon petit soldat’, directed by the French filmmaker Stéphane Brizé, and ‘Il fuoco che ti porti dentro’, directed by the Italian Edoardo De Angelis. No wars or bombings, no deaths or injuries, not even natural disasters. Just the things that most readily weigh on our daily lives. To put it plainly: work and family. In whichever order you prefer. Stéphane Brizé has made three films about the world of work, all starring Vincent Lindon. 

‘The Law of the Market’ (a precarious worker in his fifties), ‘At War’ (trade union struggles) and ‘Another World’, which turned the perspective on its head, casting the actor in the role of the manager who has to make redundancies. In “Un bon petit soldat”, he plays the director of a large insurance company, where the newly hired Alba Rohrwacher works, dressed in the standard dark suit, her smartphone always in hand because she has a son to keep an eye on, even with his schoolwork. Dad takes care of the leisure activities; the boy amuses himself on his own with a Rubik’s cube. But he doesn’t understand maths. The new recruit (but wasn’t there a French actress? Rohrwacher speaks well but is given away by her accent, though nobody in the film seems to notice) is too shy to say that the trendy advert isn’t working; her boss, Vincent Lindon, will say it instead. The arrival of the ever-smiling psychologist is hilarious, with his breathing exercises and intrusive questions: “When was the last time you felt happy, in the last 24 hours?”. This sets the stage for the corporate drama. It’s well done, but screenwriter Brizé handles the male characters better.

Let’s move on to the family, “as airy and stimulating as a gas chamber” (as a slogan by Re Nudo put it, around 1968). Edoardo De Angelis adapts the memoir by Antonio Franchini – a writer who worked as an editor, first for Mondadori and then for Giunti – Il fuoco che ti porti dentro. Dedicated to his dreadful mother, whom he makes it clear in the opening lines stinks terribly. This line greets the viewer right on cue. The film is raucous and chaotic, just as Christmas in Milan with Mum Angela must have been. Having moved to Milan from Naples, Mum Angela cooks and cooks – far more than is necessary for the festivities. The capon has escaped its grim fate; there was no strong man to slaughter it. The grandchildren – one of whom is a vegan – head off on their own halfway through the evening, scandalised by the ‘newborn’ (or young quail) that is about to end up in an omelette. Tensions mount, and the commotion grows ever louder. We shall refrain from revealing the ending. It must be said, however, that Antonio Franchini’s screenplay is irretrievably lost: removing the first-person narrative does a world of harm to a story that was built entirely on it.

All things considered, Hirokazu Kore-eda attempts a similar project, bringing Tatsuki Fujimoto’s manga to the screen in "Look Back". Fujino is a brilliant young girl who draws manga for her primary school’s magazine. At the same school is Kyomoto, who stays shut away in her room because she is afraid of the world outside, and she too draws. A minor incident brings them together, and together they become unbeatable: one invents stories and the other illustrates them. The camera shots aim to recreate the pages of the manga "Great Snowy Landscape", and the footprints of two little girls making their way through the snow. However, a single panel can be taken in at a glance; the walk in the cinema takes longer. Tender and poetic, yet rather slow-paced, it is more captivating to describe than to watch.