{"id":2643,"date":"2011-07-15T15:31:20","date_gmt":"2011-07-15T15:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2643"},"modified":"2011-07-15T15:31:20","modified_gmt":"2011-07-15T15:31:20","slug":"il-vento-fa-il-suo-giro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/il-vento-fa-il-suo-giro\/","title":{"rendered":"Il vento fa il suo giro"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Il<\/a>
Il vento fa il suo giro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

2005
\nAka E il vento fa il suo giro, The Wind Blows Round, E l’aura fai son vir
\n110 minutes
\nItaly
\nProduced by Simone Bachini, Mario Chemello and Giorgio Diritti for Aranciafilm, Imago Orbis Audiovisivi (Bologna)
\nItalian release date: 08-05-2007
\nDirector: Giorgio Diritti
\nStory: Fredo Valla
\nScreenplay: Giorgio Diritti, Fredo Valla
\nCinematogrpahy: Roberto Cimatti
\nMusic: Marco Biscarini, Daniele Furlati
\nEditor: Edu Crespo, Giorgio Diritti
\nCast: Thierry Toscan (Philippe Heraud), Alessandra Agosti (Chris Heraud), Dario Anghilante (Costanzo, the mayor), Giovanni Foresti (Fausto), Emma Giusiano, Sergio Piasco, Vittorio Luciano, Lidia Ellena, Giuseppe Rinaudo, Piero Tomassino, Bruno Manzo, Nadia Belliardo, Angelo Martelli, Bruno Demaria, Bernardo Giaime, Frederique Chiampo, Caterina Damiano, Daniele Mattalia, Ines Cavalcanti, Kevin Chiampo, Giacomino Allais<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a pleasant surprise: an award winning Italian film which really lives up to its reputation.\u00a0 The debut film of Giorgio Diritti, a graduate from shorts and documentaries, Il vento fa il suo giro <\/strong>scored well with critics, picking up a number of David di Donatello and Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists nominations, but it wasn\u2019t quite so successful commercially and only received international distribution on the festival circuit.\u00a0 It\u2019s not hard to see why; it\u2019s deliberately paced and, quite frankly, not a great deal happens, giving it much less popular or multinational attractiveness than, say, Gomorrah <\/strong>or Il divo<\/strong>.\u00a0 And when the film it was pipped to for most of the aforementioned awards \u2013 Andrea Molaioli\u2019s La ragazza del lago<\/strong> \u2013 <\/strong>received limited international distribution despite its apparently broad appeal; well, what hope did it have.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A man and his goat in Il vento fa il suo giro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chersogno, a sleepy Alpine village is gradually turning into a ghost town: the lack of opportunities is driving away the young and leaving behind an ageing population, all the property is being bought up as holiday homes and even the mayor has moved into the nearest city because it’s so boring.\u00a0 So when a French newcomer, Philippe (Thierry Toscan), arrives with his young family in tow, it causes something of an uproar.\u00a0 And Philippe himself divides opinions too; an ex-college professor who has become disillusioned with civilisation, he’s started anew as an unconventional manufacturer of a rather tasty goat’s cheese.\u00a0 Nonetheless, the prospect of the arrival of new blood, not to mention a new business, encourages the people to perform a ‘rueido’, when the whole community comes together to help out one individual for the sake of others: the men restore the villa that has been rented to Philippe’s family, the women cook a feast of pasta.<\/p>\n

Despite the positive start, problems soon begin to mount up: Philippe’s goats repeatedly stray into the land of the fearsome old bat who lives next door; his refusal to let the priest bless the house creates a stir; there’s a quarrel over a young man he employs.\u00a0 When he intervenes in a domestic quarrel it’s the last straw for many of the villagers, and they begin an active campaign to force him out.<\/p>\n

Il vento fa il suo giro <\/strong>is a rather slow and frequently obtuse film, but at the same time it\u2019s strangely engrossing.\u00a0 Although the story isn\u2019t exactly jam-packed with event \u2013 the most thrilling moment comes with the discovery of a dead pig \u2013 the narrative has a definite sense of progression, and it draws you in thanks to the carefully constructed characters, most of whom are variants on standard rural Italian \u2018types\u2019 from other films: the village idiot, the idealistic newcomer, the peeping tom, the torn young man.\u00a0 It all looks absolutely wonderful, with the beautiful Piedmontese locations stealing the show, and in combination with the effective soundtrack Diritti succeeds in creating a compulsively oppressive ambience that perfectly captures the timelessness of the location.\u00a0 The title itself refers to a popular idiom: \u201cThe wind blows round and everything comes back sooner or later.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Beautiful<\/a>
Beautiful locations in Il vento fa il suo giro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Of course, the whole thing is allegorical: Philippe and his family stand for immigrants in general, welcomed into the community when they are seen as providing some kind of service but rapidly falling foul of the ingrained intolerance and cowardice of the existing population.\u00a0 Immigration has been a hot topic in Italian cinema for a few years now, but this is one of the more watchable films dealing with the subject, primarily because it doesn\u2019t treat it with the usual sledgehammer approach.\u00a0 The Occitan people are seen in both a positive and negative light, a community that\u2019s rooted to the past because of the increasing evidence of its own finite nature but is equally capable of good as well as bad acts.\u00a0 Philippe, furthermore, is his own worst enemy; his inability to compromise his ideals only alienates him further from the villagers, and even those who are sympathetic to him feel unable to give support as his behaviour becomes increasingly antagonistic.\u00a0 \u00a0Perhaps, most ironically of all, Philippe, who strives so hard to be unconventional, ends up becoming that clich\u00e9 of convention: an absent father who’s too busy working to spend any time with his wife and kids.<\/p>\n

Largely performed by amateurs, the acting is effective, if a little raw in places, with Toscan and Giovanni Foresti (as a disillusioned musician) being particularly effective.\u00a0 Diritti went on to direct another acclaimed film in 2009, L’uomo che verr\u00e0<\/strong>, about the Marzabotto Massacre on 1943.\u00a0 It\u2019s also possibly worth noting that there although they\u2019re very different films in terms of subject, there are certain similarities between Il vento fa il suo giro <\/strong>and La ragazza del lago<\/strong>: they are both set in isolated, mountainous communities, feature a cast of colourful characters and end with the sense that everything which has happened in the films is merely momentary, in contrast to the solidity of the landscapes they take place in.<\/p>\n

Here’s the Italian trailer:<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a pleasant surprise: an award winning Italian film which really lives up to its reputation. The debut film of Giorgio Diritti, a graduate from shorts and documentaries, Il vento fa il suo giro scored well with critics, picking up a number of David di Donatello and Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists nominations…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[713],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2643"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2643"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2649,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2643\/revisions\/2649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}