(Reviews of Gloria!; and The Bibi Files)
GLORIA!
It's been quite a year for musicals. In addition to box-office hits like Jon M. Chu's Wicked and the Disney sequel, Moana 2, there have also been arthouse offerings like Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez and Joshua Oppenheimer's The End, as well as such hybrid curios as Todd Phillips's Joker: Folie à Deux and Caroline Lindy's Your Monster. And that's even before we get to Barry Jenkins's Mufasa: The Lion King and James Mangold's Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown.
Now, those awfully nice people at CinemaItaliaUK have chosen to end their year with one of the genre's quirkier 2024 highlights, actor-singer-songwriter Margherita Vicario's directorial debut, Gloria!. Taking audacious liberties with musical history, this is set at the dawn of the 19th century in a Venetian convent-conservatoire for orphaned and outcast young women. It would make for an amusing double bill with Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez, Jr.'s musical version of Mean Girls.
Teresa (Galatéa Bellugi) is a servant at the Sant'Ignazio Institute, whose female residents are given daily music lessons by the chapel master, Perlina (Paolo Rossi). As she attends to her chores in the courtyard, Teresa notices how the rhythms around her complement the choral and orchestral music being made by the various orphans and unfortunates, who barely acknowledge her existence. The Governor (Natalino Balasso) also resents her presence and her habit of making contact with his young son when he attends mass.
As Pope Pius VII is going to be crowned in Venice because his predecessor had been the virtual prisoner of Napoleon Bonaparte, he has announced that he will be attending a service at Sant'Ignazio. Perlina is entrusted with composing a new piece for the occasion, although the Governor is concerned he has lost his gift because he always has his girls play Antonio Vivaldi's `Gloria'. Lead violinist Lucia (Carlotta Gamba) can barely concentrate on the score, however, as she only has eyes for Cristiano (Vincenzo Crea), the handsome son of a wealthy patron.
They have clandestine nocturnal assignations and Lucia hopes to be able to leave the institute and embrace the French Revolutionary tenets of liberty, fraternity, and equality that she trusts will transform Italian society. Perlina is a rigid traditionalist, however, and even consigns a gifted pianoforte to the basement, where it's found by Teresa, who quickly masters the keys having learned the kalimba. Moreover, she starts composing, as does Lucia, who hopes that her work might be included in the concert for the pope.
When she overhears Teresa at the piano with fellow musicians Marietta (Maria Vittoria Dallasta), Prudenza (Sara Mafodda), and Bettina (Veronica Lucchesi), Lucia is amazed to discover that `The Mute' can talk. However, she is perturbed to learn that she is an accomplished player and reluctantly agrees to share the instrument so that she can compose items to submit to Perlina for the papal mass.
He is suffering from writer's block and the situation is not eased by the fact he is being exploited by Cristiano (Vincenzo Crea), a dashing, but feckless chorister with whom he is besotted. He takes it out on Teresa by trying to marry her off to an ageing widower, in order to please the Governor, who doesn't want her around. However, she is rescued by his wife, Donna Lidia (Anita Kravos), although Teresa won't explain to the other girls why she has such a tortuous relationship with the Governor, when they share stories of how they came to be at Sant'Ignazio.
Frustrated by the fact that her friends prefer Teresa's upbeat style to her own baroque melodies, Lucia becomes frantic when she doesn't hear from her beau for 10 days. Her mood isn't helped when Perlina rejects her compositions without listening to them, even though he has asked Cristiano to find him a composer who would be willing to write anonymously, in return for paying off the debts the young man has accrued. Consequently, when she hears Bettina singing lyrics to Teresa's accompaniment, she flies off the handle and threatens to report the servant for using the piano and tells her classmates that they are to stop wasting their time playing this non-music.
Housekeeper Fidelia (Jasmin Mattei) warns Lucia about shouting at the Governor's son when giving him violin lessons. Perlina also criticises her when she defends Marietta for improvising during rehearsal. But she is pleased when Teresa commends a string quartet she has written and they are starting to get along better when Perlina sells the piano to raise some money to help Cristiano. Moreover, Luigi writes to inform her that he has been forbidden from seeing her again and she tries to commit suicide by slashing her wrists.
Teresa's prompt actions save her and her friends keep the nuns away while Lucia is being nursed. They also discover that the piano was bequeathed by its German maker to the orphans rather than Perlina and realise that he had no right to give it away. So, Teresa confronts him and threatens to tell Donna Lidia that her husband had rapaciously impregnated her unless he gets the piano back and plays Lucia's music for the pope. He agrees, but the girls lock him in a cupboard on the day of the performance and Teresa is found blue dress so that she can play the piano and lead the ensemble in jazzy piece that causes the Governor to have a fatal heart attack and Pope Pius to excommunicate them all.
After captions reveal that Napoleon closed down bodies like Vivaldi's Ospedale della Pietà in 1807, we see Teresa living with her son and Donna Lidia in some comfort, while Lucia, Bettina, Marietta, and Prudenza are touring Europe with their chamber orchestra and have been invited to play for Madame De Staël in Paris. It's a bullishly upbeat feminist finale and one that pushes it in the direction of René Féret's Mozart's Sister (2012) and Shelia Haymann's Fanny, The Other Mendelssohn (2020). But this remains a film that goes its own way, as it boldly avers that modern music had its roots in Venice three years after the abdication of the last doge.
In truth, the storytelling is a little flimsy and formulaic in places, while some of the commedia characterisation would seem clumsy in a pantomime. But Vicario, who co-scripted with Anita Rivarolli, captures the fluctuating spirit of the times in showing how the unholy alliance of church and state was beginning to lose its ability to subjugate women and the lower orders. The decision to suggest pederastic tendencies on the part of Perlina feels a bit unnecessary, as his Salieri-like foibles already damn him. Indeed, with the exception of the institute's handyman (played by Elio) and the unseen piano benefactor, there isn't a single admirable adult male in the entire picture.
This seems fair enough, as Vicario is clearly seeking to draw parallels with a present day that hardly represents a golden age for the male of the species. As this is self-evident, she doesn't lay on the moralising too thickly and concentrates instead on the healing of fissures between the womenfolk, as they realise the benefits of standing together. This is where the basement jamming sessions come into their own, as Vicario and editor Christian Marsiglia show the quintet bonding over pieces composed by the director and Davide Pavanello. Production designers Luca Servino and Susanna Abenavoli, and costumier Mary Montalto also make noteworthy contributions, as does cinematographer Gianluca Palma, who combines intimate candelit groupings with atmospheric views of the lagoon on which Sant'Ignazio sits.
As for the performances, comedian Paolo Rossi makes a splendidly reprehensible cleric, while Carlotta Gamba succeeds in revealing Lucia's vulnerability even when she's at her beastliest to Teresa. French actress Galatéa Bellugi similarly invests the silenced rape victim with an affecting dignity that enables her believe in herself and gradually persuade those around her to dance to her tune.
THE BIBI FILES.
Having impressed with Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes (2018) and Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg (2023), documentarist Alexis Bloom takes on in The Bibi Files the most contentious topic she has handled since she produced We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (2013) for Alex Gibney. He had been entrusted with thousands of hours of leaked digitally recorded material relating to the charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust that had been brought against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in December 2016. But Gibney passed them over to Bloom to make a film that has to be seen to be believed, as the ramifications of its disclosures have shaped and are continuing to impact events that are changing our world - rarely for the better.
The recordings are notable for the sense of entitlement displayed by Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu, as he pours scorn on the nature of the accusations and she throws hissy fits. For someone noted for his attention to detail, the prime minister suffers from recurring memory losses, as he reminds his interrogators that he has better things to do than respond to charges that he deems insignificant in relation to the situations facing Israel at home and abroad.
Bloom places the leaked images in context by tracing a career that saw Netanyahu master his media techniques while serving as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations in the 1980s before he retuned to sell the nation his messianic sense of destiny. However, his remarkable victory in the 2019 election came at a price, as he subsequently shackled Likud to such far-right leaders as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who were respectively rewarded in 2022 with the ministries of National Security and Finance.
As pro-settlers, they backed the conflict with Hamas that followed the attacks of 7 October 2023 and the bid to change the role of the Supreme Court. But Channel 13 journalist Raviv Drucker avers that the real reason for the prolonged operation in Gaza is the fear of imprisonment that has driven Netanyahu's policy of keeping the country in a permanent state of crisis so that any trial would appear unpatriotic. It's worked to date, but Drucker (a leftist liberal who has also co-produced the film) insists there has to be a tipping point.
Since the release of The Bibi Files, Netanyahu (who testified in court for the first time a couple of weeks ago) has striven to have Drucker investigated for leaking the tapes that show him in a less than advantageous light, as he answers questions about cigars, bottles of champagne, and items of jewellery that he is accused of accepting from the likes of Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, casino operator Sheldon Adelson, and communications tycoon, Shaul Elovitch.
There's a fascinating segment on the efforts of Netanyahu and his son to influence content on the Walla news website (that was formerly owned by Elovitch), which reveals that Yair wants his father to take a harder line in governing Israel. Equally intriguing is the discussion of the impact on Netanyahu's psyche caused by the death of his older brother, Yonatan, during the military operation to free hostages at Entebbe Airport on 4 July 1976. But the focus remains firmly on the image files and the contributions of the well-informed talking heads: Nimrod Novik, a former adviser to Shimon Peres; Hadas Klein, a onetime assistant to Arnon Milchan; childhood friend Uzi Beller; ex-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert; former communications chief Nir Hefetz; onetime housekeeper Meni Naftali; Avi Alcalay, who was removed as chief editor of Walla; ex-Knesset member Sami Abu Shehadeh; former Shin Bet head Ami Ayalon; West Bank paramedic Bashar Sadak Ma'amar; and kibbutz resident, Gili Schwartz.
Privacy laws mean this documentary can't be screened in Israel, although that has not stopped Netanyahu's lawyer from seeking to have Drucker investigated for his part in its making. The brazen self-righteousness evident in the police interviews means that Netanyahu should be able to ride out the ripples caused by a film that essentially accuses him of putting himself before his nation. Several speakers imply that Bibi is afraid of Sara and he may well catch it from his wife, as she doesn't come out of this at all well. Nor does Yair, whose views have consistently stirred up controversy. But Netanyahu hasn't remained at the top of the greasy pole for nearly two decades for nothing and, one suspects, it will take more than a damning exposé like this to cause him to lose his grip on power (and its perks).
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