WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria: Cinema. There's Still Tomorrow (2023), by Paola Cortellesi - The most pandering film (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

In the flood of false heroism, ideological nostalgia or clever
neorealist reincarnations of Italian cinema, the ugliest in the world
or, at least, the stupidest... national-popular operations tinged with a
certain feminist falsification are grafted, such as Paola Cortellesi's
little film C 'is it still tomorrow?. The directorial debut of
Cortellesi (who is very nice to us) is immediately kissed by success...
at the 18th edition of the Rome Film Festival she takes away the
Progressive Cinema Competition Award - Special Jury Award, Best First
Film Award BNL BNP Paribas - Mention special, Audience Award... in the
specialized press there is talk of dramedy, Italian comedy, musicals,
neorealism, postmodernism (?)... nothing really... Tomorrow there is
still a sort of sweetened sketch film which anxiously retraces the
clichés of a Rome of the suburbs and follows a filmic narrative of a
moral operetta, without having either the authorial strength or the
necessary acting creativity.

Just look at the popular figures of Anna Magnani (Bellissima, 1951) by
Luchino Visconti, Giulietta Masina (La Strada, 1954) by Federico
Fellini, Gabriella Pallotta (The Roof, 1956) by Vittorio De Sica, Anna
Magnani (Mamma Roma, 1962 ) by Pier Paolo Pasolini or all the
proletarian women of Ken Loach's cinema... to understand that those
faces, those women's bodies contain the universality of pain and at the
same time of rebirth...

The consensus that There's Still Tomorrow achieved in cinemas was broad
and participatory, not only from the female audience, and we saw
emotional, sincere applause up to the most absolute religious and
political observance... plus one and a half million tickets sold and a
takings of over 12 million Euros project the film into the firmament of
the Italian box office... the velinarian critics, not only those of the
caviar left, but also the specialists of the most "nobled" press were
not spared from impetuous enthusiasm...

By There's still tomorrow. Rome, May 1946. The city is shrouded in
post-war poverty... the Allied military guards the streets, the
institutional referendum and the election of the Constituent Assembly
next June 2-3... for the first time women have the right to vote and
participate in the change of a a people inclined to transformism... the
Italians have thrown their black shirts in the garbage, now they drown
themselves in the red flag or drool in the confessionals of the shielded
cross... it is the limelight of a serving people incapable of giving up
a king, a dictator or a boastful government and detective story that
decides on its future... except, of course, for the sixty thousand
deaths of the partisan struggle which, at least for a certain time,
restored the dignity lost or perhaps never had to an entire country.

There's Still Tomorrow tells the story of a proletarian family... Delia
(Paola Cortellesi) suffers the beatings of her husband Ivano (Valerio
Mastrandrea), as a remission of her sins... she lovingly takes care of
Ivano's scoundrel father, Sor Ottorino (Giorgio Colangeli)... they have
three children and for the girl (Romana Maggiora Vergano) they aspire to
a bourgeois marriage... the boyfriend (Francesco Centorame) is the heir
of the neighborhood pastry chef, an enriched ex-fascist... Delia is
loved by Nino (Vinicio Marchioni), who He doesn't even have the overalls
of a mechanic, he asks her to go with him to the North where there is
work and he will leave in a few days... then a letter arrives and Delia
runs away from home, chased by Ivano and then by her daughter... Delia,
however, doesn't reach Nino, but let's vote together with hundreds of
women... the ending of the film leads us to think that from now on Ivano
will no longer beat his wife since women, as is right, have achieved
equal equality and the same rights as man.

There's Still Tomorrow is the most pandering film we've ever seen since
the time of the cinema of white telephones and black shirts... it
contains the same philistine impeccability as Black Shirt (1933) by
Giovacchino Forzano, Old Guard (1934) by Alessandro Blasetti, Noi vivi
and Addio Kira (1942) by Goffredo Alessandrini or Every day is Sunday
(1944) by Mario Baffico (filmed in the Venetian factories of the Italian
Social Republic)... it is a transfiguration of reality narrated to
achieve ecstasy or hysteria collective that leads to the contemplation
of a female imagination that has little to do with the beloved
revolution of women or with the desire to love and be loved by the women
who accomplished the feat of dismantling the unhappy conscience.

There is still Tomorrow retraces the sentimental dramas of Raffaello
Matarazzo (Catene, 1949, The children of nobody, 1951 or The last
violence, 1957), commercial products half comedy servants, half
policemen of the good-false ideologies of the uniformed Italy and the
"communist" grooms " who, as we know, respect the established power and
love their mother very much!... the architectural conformism, the
picturesque abuse, the invincible candor of the protagonist of There's
Still Tomorrow leaves us stunned... in the face of such descriptive
sadness even the Luis Buñuel's exterminating angel starts laughing.

Let's see it up close There's still tomorrow... Cortellesi is the modest
lady of torture... there is no interpretative variation on her face, not
even the body of the commoner is good for her... she wanders around the
screen with the naivety of a gift divine, like on a sidewalk without
whores. Mastrandea plays the bad husband, he is so rigid in the role
that it borders on involuntary ridiculousness... the white undershirt,
the cards with friends, the determination of a drunken worker, the
imbecile relationship with the father, make the characterology of the
character a vaudeville sketch. The precariousness of the family that
lives in a basement seems to come out of a photo novel... the kids run
around throughout the film, the sister kisses her boyfriend on the
doorstep, the women in the courtyard do their knitting and peel the
peas. There is also the friend of Ivano's father, a bit dumb, lost in
his own diversity. Delia makes umbrellas, mends clothes, keeps the house
clean and takes slaps with resignation... the director then finds
nothing better than to show her husband's ferocity through a sort of
slow dance... but neither Mastrandrea nor Cortellesi have the artistic
caliber of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (to whom they would like to
refer)... if anything the result is a nice little scene, quite
suspicious of flattery... if you hide the truth it is clear that you
discard it. The black soldier who guards the streets of Rome is an
unwatchable Rossellinian cameo. Delia found a photograph of her family
on the ground and gave it back to the soldier... they don't understand
each other's languages but we don't know how they understand each other
when Delia sees a sort of brutal possession in her daughter's boyfriend
and asks the black man for help to skip the future son-in-law's pastry
shop and so also the wedding. The "burini", says Ivano, have returned to
the hunger of their village. The ending is worthy of a mystery TV series
about good manners... Delia runs away from home and the public thinks
she is joining Nino towards a new life... instead she goes to the ballot
box together with a river of women... when her husband approaches, the
women around Delia they act hard, the daughter smiles, Ivano walks
away... now Delia is a new woman and with the help of the other women
she will no longer be oppressed. Not even the village idiot can believe it.

There's Still Tomorrow is an elementary flow of long shots, repeated
until exhaustion... Delia's walks, her bag, her gaze lost in space,
follow an actor's handbook derived from television... everything is
pleasant, bearable, even acceptable, not only Ivano's violence, even the
forced stupidity of the father or the excessive characterization of the
rich family constitute the phenomenal effect of the film... black is
good, it dispenses smiles and chocolates, when even a few bombs are
needed. The screenplay (Cortellesi, Furio Andreotti, Giulia Calenda) is
a little homework reflected in the media stupidity à la Fazio,
Propaganda live, Ballarò and the like... the proletarians speak a
didactic language which does not correspond to the figuration of the
bodies-roles and the popular tone (designed to reach a large audience)
deposit the film in the conventions, intrigues and impostures that keep
society afloat.

Sor Ottorino (Ivano's father): "At the end of the day, she is a good
woman of the house". Ivano: "It's just that it gets out of my hands".
Sor Ottorino: "Don't always lead him, otherwise he'll get used to it!
One, but strong!". Ivano says to his daughter: "You think about bringing
the money home and giving a hand to your incapable mother." Marisa
(vegetable): "Have you seen how beautiful Americans are, oh?! They have
all their teeth! But many!" Delia: "Eh, more than us, I think". I don't
know? Even words have a poetics of dream or play, when they float on the
grid of social domestication, they rot, like men without qualities.

The electronic black and white of photography (Davide Leoni) is dull, it
has nothing to do with the evocative power of The Artist (2011), Ida
(2013), Nebraska (2013) or Oppenheimer (2023)... not to mention the
'incipit in black/white among the greatest in the history of cinema in
Antichrist (2018) by Lars von Trier, when the child falls from the
window while the parents make love, which develops on Handel's music and
singing: " Let me cry / my cruel fate / and let me sigh for freedom".
What the gospels announce, cinema sometimes realizes.

The light blue-grey that looms over the entire film refers to certain
advertisements for female and male intimate products... together with
the sequential-scholastic editing by Valentina Mariani and the Mulino
Bianco scenography by Massimiliano Paonessa and Lorenzo Lasi, they
infuse the film with an atmosphere by convent embroiderers...

The original music of There's Still Tomorrow is by Lele Marchiatelli and
follows the obligatory optimism of the film package... but it is the
mass of songs that remain in the eyes of the viewer... the miscellany is
quite surprising... - Open the windows (Fiorella Bini), Nobody (MUSICA
NUDA by Petra Magoni & Ferruccio Spinetti), Let's Pardon Us (Achille
Togliani), A Mouth Closed (Daniele Silvestri), I Fall in Love Really
(Fabio Concato), The Evening of Miracles (Lucio Dalla), Calvin (The Jon
Spencer Blues Explosion), B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad - OUTKAST), The
little things (Big Gigantic featuring Angela McCluskey), Swinging on the
right side (Lorenzo Maffia and Alessandro La Corte), Tu sei il mio
grande amor (Lorenzo Maffia and Alessandro La Corte, voice Enrico
Rispoli ) -... are scattered haphazardly along the gray line that
illuminates the culture of ubiquity, typical of the naked meal of the
politics of mediocracy, where governments and governed, exploiters and
exploited, dominators and dominated, find themselves feeding on the
blood of the poor of everywhere.

Let's cut it short... There's Still Tomorrow is a clever, hypocritical
film, a sketch of granted freedoms... a cinematographic product that
performs an aesthetic ritual of sure emotional response, without ever
getting to the heart of the political revolution of the women who really
changed the world . The film corresponds exactly to the laws of the
market... it is an account of the system of hopes delegated to the
organization, the party, the structures... an illustrated postcard that
brings everyone together... a feminist film, that of Cortellesi? Yes,
but... it seems more like a utilitarian exercise than something that
really deserves a smile or a tear.

Poverty, pride, impudence, insubordination... they are not there in
There's Still Tomorrow... the hearth of civic virtues is stoked in
sexual chastity... patriarchy, love, cruelty, friendship... everything
is glossy, played as much on ignorance as on passivity ... but banality
is not harmless, it is defeated when it is forced to change its skin...
when what threatens us is threatened... when the subversion of right
breaks injustice in the churchyard of God, the Family and the State.

Pino Bertelli

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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