Mostly taken up by conversation between two characters, a father and his grown son, Ettore Scola’s Che ora è? is commendable most of all for its refusal to sink into the usual claptrap, soap operatic melodrama. (Think I Never Sang for My Father, Gilbert Cates, 1970.) Usually these films are full of contrivance, a part of which involves a teary-eyed capitulation of one character to the other. Scola’s film, which Scola co-wrote along with his daughter, Silvia, and Beatrice Ravaglioni, is headed toward a subtler reconciliation, to which both characters contribute.
Marcello is a wealthy, highly successful lawyer in Rome, who is visiting his son for the day in Civitavecchia, the port town where Michele has one more month of military duty left to serve. Each feels that the other is disrespectful of his privacy, and indeed Marcello asks Loredana, Michele’s girlfriend, whom he meets for the first time, and only at his own insistence, how good in bed his son is. (This question, which she has the good sense not to answer, cracks up Loredana.) Marcello wants to know that his son is okay. Meanwhile, Marcello himself is not okay. Two years after suffering a heart attack, he is overweight, overindulging and smoking. His recurrent cough sounds horrible.
This is a modest film and, really, not a particularly good one—but one that’s simply better than run-of-the-mill father-son tearjerkers. It is thoughtful, quiet, sincere, respectable.
The two lead actors, Marcello Mastroianni and Massimo Troisi (who, ironically, both had about the same number of years left to live), shared the best actor prize at Venice, but only Mastroianni gives a convincing performance.
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WHAT TIME IS IT? (Ettore Scola, 1989)
By grunesMostly taken up by conversation between two characters, a father and his grown son, Ettore Scola’s Che ora è? is commendable most of all for its refusal to sink into the usual claptrap, soap operatic melodrama. (Think I Never Sang for My Father, Gilbert Cates, 1970.) Usually these films are full of contrivance, a part of which involves a teary-eyed capitulation of one character to the other. Scola’s film, which Scola co-wrote along with his daughter, Silvia, and Beatrice Ravaglioni, is headed toward a subtler reconciliation, to which both characters contribute.
Marcello is a wealthy, highly successful lawyer in Rome, who is visiting his son for the day in Civitavecchia, the port town where Michele has one more month of military duty left to serve. Each feels that the other is disrespectful of his privacy, and indeed Marcello asks Loredana, Michele’s girlfriend, whom he meets for the first time, and only at his own insistence, how good in bed his son is. (This question, which she has the good sense not to answer, cracks up Loredana.) Marcello wants to know that his son is okay. Meanwhile, Marcello himself is not okay. Two years after suffering a heart attack, he is overweight, overindulging and smoking. His recurrent cough sounds horrible.
This is a modest film and, really, not a particularly good one—but one that’s simply better than run-of-the-mill father-son tearjerkers. It is thoughtful, quiet, sincere, respectable.
The two lead actors, Marcello Mastroianni and Massimo Troisi (who, ironically, both had about the same number of years left to live), shared the best actor prize at Venice, but only Mastroianni gives a convincing performance.
Tags: Marcello Mastroianni
This entry was posted on July 22, 2008 at 5:09 am and is filed under Informal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.