Reviewed by Jo Wood
Stars Silvio Orlando, Margherita Buy, Jasmine
Trinca, Michele Placido, Silvio Berlusconi
Language Italian, with subtitles
UK Certification 12 | RRP £17.99
DVD Region 2 | Aspect ratio 16:9
Runtime 110 min
Written & directed by Nanni Moretti
The Caiman, Il Caimano, the Berlusconi Movie. With its many titles, this Italian movie has many personalities to it. Not so much a film with an intoxicating plot, or indeed even a movie about Berlusconi, this is a story about a man, Bruno Bonomo (Orlando). With a haphazard, porn-esque beginning, layer upon delicious layer is added until it reaches glorious maturity, and one is filled with the desire to re-watch and absorb it all again.
With glorious character development, this down-and-out movie producer, desperately tries to hold the frayed fringes of his life together, his ailing career, his failed marriage, his eccentric but adaptable children, and his fractured finances. Bruno turns for the viewer from an annoying misfit to a loveable hero, supported by a superb script and incredible acting from his co-stars. Bruno's relationship with his wife Paolo (Buy) makes up a key part of this movie. Still obviously deeply in love, but unable to stay together, a terribly poignant scene after a meeting with their divorce lawyer sees the two ex-spouses in separate cars in traffic, overtaking and re-overtaking each other over and over again, in order to smile and wave at each other — curdling miserably the desire to desperately not let go with frustrating inevitability.
Having not worked for 10 years, Bruno decides to produce the script of a young, apparently single mother, Teresa (Trinca), without actually reading it, and then asks her, a complete novice, to direct it. After much confusion, the script turns out to be about the 37th richest man in the world, Italian prime minister Berlusconi. Moretti directs this movie with precision and confidence. At the time scenes appear to be mish-mashed together, alongside pregnant and uncomfortable silences and pause. However, upon completion, one wonders if the film would have worked done in any other way. Dark and enormously funny, with a bitter-sweet mix of emotions, this film is both heartwarming and heartbreaking.
EXTRAS* Very thin on the ground: just the theatrical trailer.