(Dinner parties with pretty people and lots of wine - I've died and gone to heaven...)
CAST: Pierfrancesco Favino, Luca Argentero, Stefano Accorsi, Margherita Buy, Ambra Angioloni, Filippo Timmi, Michaelangelo Tommaso, Luigi Diberti, Serra Yilmaz.
DIRECTOR: Ferzan Ozpetek
WARNING: Some SPOILERS one seriously hawt coma patient - straight ahead...
IT'S LIKE THIS: Ah, the dinner party. It's an art form that requires certain elements to get completely right. You need the following: (1) good food, (2) great wine, and (3) interesting, exciting people. Get any of these wrong and you've got a potential disaster in the making. Nothing is worse than a dinner party with vibrant and intelligent companions - but shitty food and suck-ass wine. Well, except maybe for a dinner party with terrific food and wine - but dinner companions who are boring as hell and can't carry on an intelligent conversation to save their lives.
The tricky art of the dinner party (and the equally tricky art of choosing your friends) is at the heart of our next review, SATURNO CONTRO. The Italian-illiterate among you are probably wondering what the title means. Well, allow me to enlighten you: it means "Saturn In Opposition" - which is an astrological term to denote that you've got something fucked-up going on in your Tenth House. Or is it the Sixth House?
Whatever. The point is one of our characters is an astrology freak, hence the title. She is Roberta (Ambra Angioloni), and in addition to being a horoscope nut, she's also a slut and a cokehead. Par-tay! Roberta's circle of friends include: (1) Davide (Pierfrancesco Favino), famous gay writer who should really do more crunches and push-ups; (2) Lorenzo (Luca Argentero), Davide's lover who doesn't need to do any crunches and push-ups (i.e., he's sssssssssmokin' hot, yo!); (3) Sergio (Ennio Fantatichini), colossal sourpuss who goes around with an expression that suggests he just smelled a dog fart; (4) Angelica (Margherita Buy), winsome psychologist who is married to a cheating douchebag; (5) Antonio (Stefano Accorsi), aforementioned cheating douchebag; (6) Neval (Serra Yilmaz), ballbusting harridan who is married to a cop; (7) Roberto (Filippo Timi), aforementioned cop; and (8) Paolo (Michaelangelo Tommaso), ssssssmokin' hot wannabe writer who is trying to get Davide to mentor him - but clearly wants to fuck Lorenzo senseless. Can't say I blame him. Lorenzo looks just like Luca Argentero - and I would tap that in a nanosecond. He's like an Italian version of Russell Crowe - which, let's face it, is the only way you could make Russell Crowe even hotter:
But I digress. Anyhow, Roberta, Davide, Lorenzo, Angelica, Antonio, Neval, Roberto, and Paolo all gather weekly for mouth-watering dinners at Davide and Lorenzo's swanky apartment. From the looks of things, this the kind of dinner party you want to be at: great eats, awesome vino, and a bunch of crackheads who never fail to entertain and amuse. Unfortunately, one particular dinner gets seriously buzz-killed when none other than the hottest guy (Lorenzo, duh) keels over and goes into a coma. What. The. Cazzo? I guess it's one of those diseases that only hits sexy movie characters. Look at Campbell Scott in DYING YOUNG, Ali MacGraw in LOVE STORY, Kevin Costner in AMERICAN FLYERS, and Timothy Dalton and Anthony Edwards in HAWKS. Apparently, the longer someone has this disease, the more sssssssmokin' they get.
On top of Lorenzo's sudden mysterious illness, the dinner buds also have to deal with the implosion of Antonio's marriage when he decides he can't continue lying to Angelica and tells her the truth of his affair. Which leads to Neval tracking down his mistress in the flower shop she works at, where Neval proceeds to... well, let's just say it's not the most typical encounter between a mistress and a wife's best friend. More like atypical. The kind that only happens in movies. Usually, in real life, these confrontations result in catfights that would horrify actual cats.
So... will Lorenzo ever come out of his coma? How will his friends cope with the uncertainty of his sickness? Will Davide start something new with Paolo? Or will he stick by his man - even if his man may never wake up again? What happens when Lorenzo's parents arrive in Rome to take over the care of their son? Will they take him away from his life with Davide? Is it for the best? Why oh why didn't that jackass Antonio go into the coma instead? Why does the hottest guy in the cast have to be the sacrificial lamb? WHY!?!?!?
Oh, well... time for some more Pinot Noir.
BUT, SERIOUSLY: In past scheduling posts, we jokingly referred to SATURNO CONTRO as LOVE ACTUALLY: ITALIAN-STYLE. That's actually not the most accurate analogy, because while LOVE ACTUALLY and its homages like NEW YEAR'S EVE, VALENTINE'S DAY, PARIS, and NEW YORK I LOVE YOU revolved around the love lives of a large group of loosely-connected characters, SATURNO CONTRO pivots around the love lives of small group of tightly-connected characters. In that regard, it is more similar to films like ST. ELMO'S FIRE (a group of recent college grads finds their way through the world and their place in it), CRUSH (three women pushing 40 hang out every week - then one of them begins a love affair with a 25-year old guy), THE BIG CHILL (college friends reunite years after graduation after one of them dies), and TV shows like THIRTYSOMETHING and FRIENDS (close-knit group of friends see each other through good times and bad).
SATURN CONTRO's director is Ferzan Ozpetek, the Turkish Italian auteur who is also responsible for stellar fare like HAMAM: IL BAGNO TURCO, MINE VAGANTI, LE FATI IGNORANTI, and LA FINESTRA DI FRONTE. Each of these films revolved around the theme of family - whether a family of relatives or a family of friends - and its importance. SATURNO CONTRO is less powerful than those films because of a focus on a larger group of characters with no clear protagonist. The result is less of an emotional hook than the rest of Ozpetek's output. It also doesn't help that Lorenzo - easily the most charismatic and compelling of the group - departs the action far too soon. Luca Argentero plays him with a sexy combination of boyish intelligence and quiet intensity. Argentero recently featured as Giovanni, Julia Roberts' character's Italian tutor in EAT PRAY LOVE, and hopefully his exposure in that film will leads to more work on this side of the Atlantic.
Stefano Accorsi, Pierfrancesco Favino, Ambra Angioloni, Michelangelo Tommaso, Margherita Buy, Filippo Timi, Ennio Fantastichinni, and Serra Yilmaz turn in strong, vivid work as the rest of Lorenzo's "family." The male characters are just a tad less vivid than the women, who basically steal the show. Buy is great as the wronged wife Angelica, who manages to still behave with grace and elegance in spite of the crumbling of her marriage, while Yilmaz shines in the aforementioned flower shop scene with Antonio's mistress. Angioloni's subplot where the troubled Roberta forms an unexpected bond with a tough but kind-hearted hospital doctor (Milena Vukotic) is another highlight. Basically, while the men are okay (with the exception of Argentero, who is much more than okay but disappears way too early) the women carry SATURNO CONTRO.
Even with a slightly lower standing on the ladder of Ozpetek's body of work, SATURNO CONTRO is still a well-made film that effectively drives home the importance of friendship and how you can't put a price on the value of family - whether of blood or kinship. It may not be as terrific as HAMAM: IL BAGNO TURCO, MINE VAGANTI, LE FATI IGNORANTE, and LA FINESTRA DI FRONTE, but it is still a good film in its own right.
