Only one new release in Italy this week… but it’s one I’ve been looking forward to! Paolo Sorrentino’s Il divo opened to brisk business, although it was still beaten at the box office by Sex and the City, which took about 33% more.
It’s a biography of Giulio Andreotti, the long serving Italian politician and occassional prime minister, who has sat in Italian parliament since 1946. Details are sketchy, but I assume it to be a character study set against the background of post-war Italian history… and therefore involving the mafia, revolutionaries, corruption and so on and so on. Andreotti is played by Toni Servillo, the busy actor who’s also led recently in Sorrentino’s The Consequences of Love and La ragazza del lago (two of the best Italian films in recent years), and also in the cast are a couple of interesting performers… Giulio Bosetti popped up in Requiem for a Secret Agent back in 66, and was in several peplums; Flavio Bucci had his throat torn out in Suspiria; Aldo Ralli started off in awful comedies like Rick and John Conquerors of the West (67) and Caligulas Orgies (84)
