3 stars (out of 5)
This hit Italian dramatic comedy from co-writer/director Edoardo Maria Falcone (his first shot at the top job after years as scriptwriter only of a swag of pics barely known outside Europe) aims high but falls short, and while much praise has been heaped upon star Marco Giallini his performance frequently feels somewhat less than divine.
Tommaso (Giallini) is a rich, respected heart surgeon who’s also insufferably self-obsessed, arrogant and rude, and it’s hard to understand why his family have adored him for so long but, well, they just do. His wife Carla (Laura Morante) happily puts up with his prickly nature and his grown-up son Andrea (Enrico Oetiker) still lives at home, while Tommaso’s daughter Bianca (Ilaria Spada) and her husband Gianni (Edoardo Pesce) live across the hall from their apartment and are unaware that Tommaso nastily calls them “silly goose” and “wretch” behind their backs.
When Andrea announces that he has big news, the family at first suspect something else entirely but, of course, his revelation is that he wants to become a priest, which sends lifelong atheist Tommaso into a wildly-gesticulating rant, as he raves (in the subtitles) about “obscurantism” (look it up) and the ludicrousness of religion (but not, interestingly enough, child sexual abuse by the clergy). This leads him to check out the hip priest, Don Pietro (Alessandro Gassman), who turned Andrea on, so to speak, and for our frustrating protagonist to set up one of those elaborate, lie-filled, only-in-comedies situations where he hope to unmask DP as a fraud, and yet (but of course) Tommaso is instead eventually opened up to the beauty of the world and starts being nice to everyone. Yikes.
Morante, Spada and Gassman are pretty strong here under Falcone’s direction, and yet Giallini rather overacts, carrying on and mouthing dialogue (again carefully translated for the subtitles) that no one would ever use in real life and behaving in a frenzied fashion for which no one would ever truly forgive him. And what’s with all the frantic hand gestures, Signor? Is that really the way that… oh. Oops.
I Wake Up Screening 