My Mother's Smile

Marco Bellocchio is a voice in the Italian cinema that has been present for about four decades now; he is still going strong. Like a good wine, Mr. Bellocchio gets better with the passage of time. His latest film to get a commercial run is "Ora di religione". This is a complex movie worth taking a look at it, as it presents us a different input on how the director, who also wrote the screen play, views religion, and the Catholic Church in general.

Italy is a supposedly Catholic country. Like the rest of Europe, Italy is going through a change in the way the Catholic Church exerts its influences in everything. More and more, people are asking about what they were taught as children and the realities of modern life where science explains mysteries that were not questioned before.

If you haven't seen the film, perhaps you should stop reading here.

Mr. Bellocchio decides to take a look at the issue of sainthood and its ramifications, as it affects a bourgeois family in turmoil. The Picciafuoccos come from a family of five sons. Egido, has killed his mother, who is being considered for canonization because someone claims he has been cured of a horrible fatal disease by praying to the matriarch of the family.

At the center of the story we find Ernesto, the artist son. He becomes concerned when Irene, his estranged wife, tells him about a change in their young son, Leonardo. This boy has become obsessed with the dogma being taught to him in his school. In his young mind, Leonardo can't differentiate between reality and what he has learned. Thus, he feels about talking to God, because he's everywhere.

Ernesto learns about the possibility of his mother being declared a saint by a cardinal who wants to interview the family and clarify an aspect of her death. The machinery has been set in motion. Ernesto realizes with horror how the family is affected by the news. Ernesto gets to realize what each brother, as well as his aunts, stand to benefit when his late mother be declared officially a saint. The wheels of commercialism have been set in motion and they will not stop the personal ambitions from each one in the family.

In Sergio Castellitto, the director has found the perfect actor to play Ernesto. Mr. Castellitto has demonstrated he is one of the best actors of the moment, as well as an excellent director. He gives an amazing performance as Ernesto, the son that questions his family's motives as well as what he sees in that society.

The ensemble cast is wonderful. The film is dark. It kept reminding this viewer of some of the best films of the Italian classic cinema without imitating any style at all. Mr. Bellocchio is an original who has his own voice. He questions a lot of things that most of us have taken for granted, but are unresolved in the prodigious mind of Marco Bellocchio.

Marco Bellocchio's new movie, `L'ora di religione,' has one of the more peculiar premises in cinematic history: an artist and illustrator (I'm afraid he's a movie artist, whose work and life are rather vaguely and glamorously sketched in) learns that his recently deceased mother, whom he thought a bore and a fool, has been proposed by the rest of his family for sainthood, and has a good chance of getting it, and the Vatican wants to ask him a few questions about her death. The artist is stupefied and so are we. Whether we are fascinated and intrigued is another question. The other family members behind the canonization project have enough pretension and influence to want more of what they've already got, and the idea is that the secondhand publicity they'll receive through having a beatified mom will add to their social, political, and financial success. Ernesto Picciafuoco, the artist, is not only appalled by this new development, but also troubled by the simultaneous discovery of his own young son's apparent burgeoning religiosity. What follows is a meandering investigation of the two situations. Ernesto (Sergio Castellitto) looks a little like Dustin Hoffman but with more `there' there. He has to have presence and intelligence to be at the center of an examination of religion that is as complicated, quirky, and provocative as the one that occupies `L'ora di religione.' Castellitto's naturalness and humanity do a lot to make the risk of such a weird premise pay off. His scenes with Gigio Alberti as Ettore, his little son, are absolutely charming and young Alberti is wonderfully spontaneous and real.

If only the other family relationships were as natural and made as much sense. For me the movie fails to come together, partly, I admit, because the Catholic church has never been a big concern of mine, and partly because of flaws in the screenplay and the style that make the story even harder to follow than it would be anyway. Every role other than Ernesto's and Ettore's is more or less a cameo. There are complicated theological disputes that are suddenly broken off by surreal fantasies. (Bellocchio wavors back and forth between satirical realism and obscurantist hyperrealism, and the combination doesn't work well here.) There is the too-perfect and too-beautiful Diana Sereni (Chiara Conti), the teacher of Ettore's `ora di religione' (religion class), who has apparently inspired Ettore's precocious religious crisis and whom Ernesto promptly falls in love with at their first meeting. Instead of a dubious influence as seemed at first, she eventually appears to be a better candidate for sainthood than mom, just on the basis of the magical glow around her face when she's onscreen. Ernesto, with Castellitto's able assistance, despite the odd premise and the shaky plot development, continues to retain some degree of three-dimensionality throughout, but the others tend to the stereotypical. The artist's estranged wife pops up every so often only to help Ernesto take young Ettore to school, a scene that recurs with tiresome repetitiveness.

The Vatican `investigation' that draws in Ernesto aims to discover whether a brother, currently incarcerated, murdered their mother in her sleep, or, as a new rumor has it, whether the mother was awake and forgave her son for doing her in. A favorable answer to this question might tip the scale for mom from the merely super-nice into the saintly category, or from the saintly into the canonizable. Unfortunately this whole issue also strained my credulity far beyond its capacity. Ernesto's bizarre interview on this topic with a Cardinal, Don Piumini (Maurizio Donadoni) in what appears to be a Vatican dining hall for poor and disabled people, is memorable if only for Piumini's stylized manner and strong presence. (One concrete thing I learned from this movie is that Italian Catholic clerics wear the latest chic eyeglasses.)

Equally bizarre is a gathering of rightwing ideologues led by a certain Count Bulla, who challenges Ernesto to a duel. What century are we in? Bellocchio's movie is outrageously personal. In America we'd call it self-indulgent; but he's Italian and this movie is serious and intellectual enough to have been the only Italian entry at Cannes. There is a waste of skill and talent here. This is a gifted filmmaker, and these are excellent actors, and this is material of potentially enormous importance to the audience (if not to me). For some it will all work. It will seem tremendously original and thought provoking. For others it will be cause for head shaking and rueful remarks about what ever happened to the great Italian cinema of those wonderful twenty years of cultural flowering in Italy after the end of World War II. Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini, Visconti, Antonioni: where are you now when we need you?

I really enjoyed this film. I think that Sergio Castellitto was brilliant. He is one of my favorite actors and he did not disappoint me at all in this film. I recommend that you rent it if you are in the mood for a very interesting story and great acting. Yes, it was one of those films where you interpret the ending, but so much the better. I like to think after a film and not be fed any formulaic plot-- which this film did not follow at all. I hope Sergio Castellitto continues to get cast in these great roles. I loved him in "Ne Quittez Pas" too! Oh, it's too bad that these films don't get released in America though! Euros can get kind of pricey!

Interesting, hard to categorize (not a tragedy, not a comedy, maybe somewhat of a satire?) movie about a son who's mother (assumed to be anything BUT saintly) is being recommended for Sainthood. Movie seems to believe that the Catholic church hasn't done a very good job of assessing her qualifications....and given the current problems the Catholic Church is facing in America....it's quite believable. The tone is pretty somber; some of the plot is confusing at times, and I wondered if there was supposed to be a "higher meaning" than the action on screen? But even though there seemed to be lots of loose ends, it made me think....though no conclusions could be drawn. Part of the Chicago International Film Festival....fits that genre well.

"My Mother's Smile (L'Ora di religione: Il sorriso di mia madre)" is a rollicking take on Catholicism that's very like how "I Heart Huckabees" treated existentialism, but with even more Tom Robbins-like absurdist humor.

Almost Kafka-like, with a touch of Woody Allen, the central character is the straight man in the joke, particularly with Sergio Castellitto's hang dog look (he was the Italian lover in "Mostly Martha") as he wakes up one morning to discover that his mother is about to be declared a saint.

We see the impact of this hypocritical quest on his ex-wife, brothers, old friends, aunts, priests and other people he has to come in contact with over two days, as everyone has selfish reasons for promoting sainthood. The potential canonization also becomes a vehicle to examine violence, sin, madness, ambition, love, parent/child relationships, philosophy, and art, as the central figure is an artist and the titular expression is captured in a Mona Lisa-like portrait.

The satire goes a bit overboard, though, when the son is challenged to a duel at dawn, though I think there was some point about the pointlessness of archaic societal rules. Small characters are weighted with too many meanings, like a crazy architect seeking to blow up a national monument that figures in a souvenir photograph, a witness whose name is a pseudonym from Dante, a mysterious, beautiful religion teacher, and more symbolism that went by, particularly as this is one of those typical Italian movies where the subtitles seem abridgments of the conversations.

In a lovely twist on the pieta, the most moving scenes are the paternal ones between father and son.

The soundtrack includes beautiful contemporary classical religious music including Adams and Tavener.