Title: The peacock's paradise (Il paradiso del pavone)
Director: Laura Bispuri
Language: Italian
Running time: 87'
In Thomas Vinterberg’s “Festen,” we have a tense family reunion for the father’s birthday. This was the first Dogma 95 movie, with their vote of chastity towards all the spectacle that could be put into the production of a film. A movie about the Danish bourgeoisie, where all the secrets that kept the family going come out and ignite fights, quarrels and emotional abuse between all the relatives. The camera techniques serve the purpose of highlighting this tensions between the family members, with hand held camera and location shooting.
In Laura Bispuri’s The peacock’s paradise we have a similar story. The enlarged family comes together to celebrate Nena’s (Dominique Sanda) birthday in her house in front of the sea. She lives there with her husband, Umberto (Carlo Cerciello), her maid Lucia (Maddalena Crippa), with whom Nena actually has a romantic relationship that nobody knows about, and Lucia’s daughter Grazia (Ludovica Alvazzi Del Frate), who has become a mute because of an unspecified event. Son Vito (Leonardo Lidi), his wife Adelina (Alba Rohrwacher) and their daughter Alma (Carolina Michelangeli) arrive first at the house, bringing with them their pet peacock Paco. They are followed by daughter Caterina (Maya Sansa) with her ex husband Manfredi (Fabrizio Ferracane), who has given her a lift to the house but who leaves the new girlfriend Joana (Tihana Lazovic) waiting in the car. Later on, also the young cousin Isabella (Yle Vianello) arrives.
It’s a coral movie where nothing much happens. At first, we have a lot of tension: we can clearly see that Nena doesn’t like her son’s wife Adelina, and she doesn’t really try to hide it. Then, we realise that Manfredi is actually a pervert, but the director doesn’t spend enough time on this aspect of this character to make us actually realise that he is, we are just left with a sensation of uneasiness in all the scenes where the character is present. The whole family is waiting for a lunch that will never really arrive. We are already halfway through the movie, and we are all wondering, what does the peacock have to do with all this? After breaking some vases in the living room, the peacock is sent angrily on the terrace by Nena, who doesn’t want this kind of mess in her house. We are really left to wonder whether it’s the peacock she doesn’t want in her house, or if it’s actually Adelina that she would like to leave. Anyway, the peacock falls in love with a dove that lands on the balcony, and when it flies away, Paco tries to follow her, but ends up splattering on the road in front of the house. This is the only thing that really happens in the movie. And while this should be a very said event, it’s actually perceived as almost comical by the audience, that finally has been given something by the plot. Finally, all the family secrets start coming out, but there is no study of them, as everyone is too distracted by the peacock’s death to really think about Nena’s relationship with Lucia. The movie resolves in the only sentence that Grazia says, that is that we all could have been the peacock. Something that really seems to make no sense at all inside the movie, a sentence that comes out of nowhere and that we all could have avoided.
The direction of photography serves the purpose of highlighting the tension between the characters, with the use of a hand held camera, and shots that try to underline the way the characters feel but that succeeds only in creating a sharp sense of uneasiness in the audience. Also, something must have gone wrong in the color correction process, as everything is way too orange, so much that when the actors smile, their teeth resemble the color of a mango.
What The peacock’s paradise really ends up being is an Italian Dogma 95 movie, but worse.
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