Roberto Faenza seems to be getting busier as he’s getting older. His new film, Someday this Pain Will Be Useful to You, has just been released in Italy. It’s only his second English language film (the last one was Copkiller way back in the early eighties, which featured the dream team casting of Harvey Keitel and John Lydon) and it’s based on a successful novel by Peter Cameron. To be honest, it sounds a long way from the edgy kind of productions he used to be associated with, a comedy drama set in New York. But it’s got a high profile cast, including the likes of Ellen Burstyn, Lucy Liu and Peter Gallagher. According to Variety:
Seventeen-year-old James (up-and-coming Brit Toby Rego) narrates, saying he doesn’t like to talk much. There are quite a few things he says, or are said about him, that don’t jive with what’s onscreen, though the scripters aren’t being perverse, just sloppy. Another character taken from the over-plundered Holden Caulfield mold, James appears to be about to jump from the roof of his brownstone, but then mom Marjorie (Marcia Gay Harden) pulls up, home early after a failed honeymoon.
She’s a much-divorced impulsive gallery owner (another well-worn type), long split from James’ dad, Paul (Peter Gallagher), a big biz swinger. There’s also James’ older sis, Gillian (Deborah Ann Woll), who has father-figure issues; and their grandma, Nanette (Ellen Burstyn), Marjorie’s mom and the only family member with whom James feels a special connection. He’s spending the summer working at Marjorie’s gallery and apparently harboring a crush on gallery director John (Gilbert Owuor).
James is supposed to go to Brown U. but decides he’s not interested in college. Marjorie isn’t having such nonsense and sends him to life coach Rowena (Lucy Liu), whose patient ear allows him to articulate his feelings. She also gets him to confront “what happened in D.C.,” an event frequently referred to in troubled tones, which, when revealed, proves to be nothing more than a mild panic attack.
The Variety reviewer isn’t that impressed and is particularly scathing about the representation of America and the wilful kookiness of the production. To be honest, it’s not one that I can muster up much enthusiasm about, even though I’ve liked a lot of Faenza’s other work. Kookiness just isn’t my thing. But it’s had a decent release in Italy, showing in 160 cinemas, and did decent business coming in at number nine in the box office chart for the weekend.
According to Faenza:
…here the real misfits are the adults. A mother who collects husbands, a father who only goes out with little girls. In the past, when I was starting out as a director, I would have been more violent. Now these are figures I feel sorry for, like Silvio Berlusconi, who is full of money but doesn’t have a single real friend.
The hook-up between Faenza and the Cameron is rather odd,but one explanation is that Faenza has long had the ambition of making a film version of Catcher in the Rye, a book with which Someday this Pain Will Be Useful to You was regularly compared when it was published. Some reviews also mention that Faenza seems to have accentuated the similarities between the two novels. Cameron explains why he was happy for it to be an Italian film thus:
I didn’t know Faenza, but when the project came up I watched all of his films and what struck me the most was his enthusiasm. In Italy the book was more successful than in the US. Also for this reason I wanted an Italian director, I felt I was indebted.
Someday this Pain Will Be Useful to You is going to get a Stateside release in May. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes. Here’s the Italian language trailer: