La Dolce Vita

Being the cinematic lover that I am, I usually get excited about the season of film festivals that are sprinkled throughout the year. Be it the French, Spanish, Melbourne International, Queer, Greek or Italian Film Festival, I always find the time to pencil in at least one film if not more.

One dearest to my heart is the Italian Film Festival, namely because of my cultural background, but additionally because of the quality cinematic offerings that come out of Rome’s Cinecittà each year.

Italian cinema is seeing resurgence back to the heydays of Fellini, De Sica, Bertolucci and Rossellini. And it’s no surprise that I’m excited about this year’s Italian Film Festival which started a couple days ago. It’s 19 days of quality Italian cinema.

Over the last few days, I’ve been lucky enough to catch a couple of the better films on offer. Saturno Contro is a touching story about a group of friends who come together regularly, and as each week progresses nothing changes but they admire, respect and love each other deeply until it all changes for them. It’s a fantastic, touching story of friendship, love and with the two lead protagonists being gay, it’s one that’ll be of interest to those who are gay or have gay friends.

Manuale d’amore 2 is the riotous sequel of Manual d’amore (obviously!) and again has an Italian who’s who of film stars including the beautiful Monica Bellucci. Yet this line up doesn’t detract from the story about love in its many weird and wonderful ways. The movie is almost certain to be released generally in the near future.

Uno su due is a powerful drama about a man who seems to have the high life living as a successful lawyer in Genoa in a cute apartment and beautiful girlfriend until it all comes crashing down when he receives a life changing health scare. At times funny and at times uplifting, the movie is one you walk away from with a renewed outlook on life.

The festival finishes 7 October and is screening across three Palace cinemas in Melbourne including Como, Balwyn and Westgarth.