Parky At the Pictures (18/4/2025)

(Reviews of Diamanti; Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story; and Escape From Extinction: Rewilding)

DIAMANTI.

Ferzan Özpetek's 15th feature harks back to the time he was an assistant to such important Italian directors as Massimo Troisi, Maurizio Ponzi, Ricky Tognazzi, Sergio Citti, and Francesco Nuti. Among his tasks was to liaise with the costume makers at the Sartoria Tirelli, which was run by Piero Tosi. Those experiences inform Diamanti, which will remind those fortunate to see it courtesy of CinemaItaliaUK of the sure touch that made Özpetek such a critical favourite with such early outings as Hamam (1997), Harem Suare (1999), The Ignorant Fairies (2001), and Facing Windows (2003), which won the prestigious David di Donatello Award for Best Film.

As it's dedicated to Mariangela Melato, Virna Lisi, and Monica Vitti, it's fitting that the action opens with some of the actresses with whom Özpetek has worked down the years. Indeed, he even takes a cameo as himself to welcome such old colleagues as Luisa Ranieri, Jasmine Trinca, Nicole Grimaudo, Paola Minaccioni, Elena Sofia Ricci, Lunetta Savino, Aurora Giovinazzo, Milena Vukotic, Carla Signoris, Anna Ferzetti, and Loredana Cannata. Along with newcomers Vanessa Scalera, Geppi Cucciari, Milena Mancini, Sara Bosi, and Mara Venier, they have been invited to lunch and a read through of Özpetek's latest screenplay, which he has co-written with Carlotta Corradi and Elisa Casseri and which sets its story in Rome in 1974.

Sisters Alberta (Luisa Ranieri) and Gabriella Canova (Jasmine Trinca) run a fashion house that designs costumes for the stage and screen. When Oscar-winning designer Blanca Vega (Vanessa Scalera) comes to discuss her forthcoming 18th-century saga, she drops beads down the staircase to emphasise the fluidity she requires with the fabrics. Alberta is concerned that they are taking on too much work and that their seamstresses are exhausted. But the micro-managing Gabriella insists they will cope and produce their customarily excellent work.

Her husband, Lucio (Luca Barbarossa), detects distress at the dinner table, but she swears everything is under control. By contrast, seamstress Nicoletta (Milena Mancini) gets hell from spouse Bruno (Vinicio Marchioni) when he comes home in a foul mood after being fired and tosses her into the yard with a slap for serving up substandard risotto.

Unable to find child care, Paolina (Anna Ferzetti) brings her young son into work and gets lectured by Gabriella. But Silvana (Mara Venier) hides him away in a storeroom before telling Paolina how she used to be a dancer in the music-hall before time caught up with her and her boyfriend lost interest. The mood lightens, however, when a couple of hunky men make a delivery and the women cajole them into singing a song and everyone joins in for an impromptu dance number that leaves both men smitten with newcomer Giuseppina (Sara Bosi), who annoys Gabriella by wanting to design before she had learnt the ropes.

Something of a diva, Bianca is unhappy with a dress until she sees Gabriella unwrap a sweet and gets the idea to decorate the frock with ruffles. Actress Alida Borghese (Carla Signoris) proves harder to please when she comes for a fitting and Alberta and Gabriella have to prevent her from bumping into deadly rival Sofia Volpi (Kasia Smutniak) in the next room.

Alberta is taken aback when Leonardo Cavani (Carmine Recano) comes to the atelier with a financial proposal. Gabriella doesn't recognise him, but he was the love of her sister's life and she reminds him of how he had broken her heart in Paris 15 years earlier. When they dine with Aunt Olga (Milena Vukotic), it emerges that Alberta was working for Balenciaga at the time and seems to have sacrificed her career to join Gabriella in business. Seemingly, she was also close to Silvana, who continues to worry about her.

Meanwhile, Beatrice (Aurora Giovinazzo), the niece of Eleonora (Lunetta Savino), is hidden away in a storeroom after she flees the police following a street demonstration. During the night, she adds brocade to a dress and Bianca is delighted with it and asks who did such exquisite work, but no one knows. On her next visit, however, she fumes that a costume that is key to revealing a character's personality has been altered without her permission and Alberta and Gabriella fall out when the former refuses to admonish their client for being so rude to their workers.

Over a typically gossipy staff lunch, Nina (Paola Minaccioni) notices the cut on Nicoletta's lip and offers her sympathy. Fausta (Geppi Cucciari) says they will help her kill Bruno and dump his body in the well and she agrees to let them know the next time he hurts her. Working late, Alberta catches Beatrice tinkering with another dress and is so impressed by her reasons for the change that she hires her. Across the city, Nina (Paola Minaccioni) tries to coax son Vittorio (Dario Samac) into watching television with her, but he refuses to leave his room. Eventually, he agrees to visit a friend of Eleonora's to discuss his problems and father Marco (Valerio Morigi) offers to take him.

Lorenzo the film director (Stefano Accorsi) comes to the atelier and demands that a train is added to a dress against Bianca's wishes. She cringes at being humiliated in front of the staff, but the sisters play it cool in order to keep Lorenzo happy. When he returns, he throws a hissy fit and Bianca walks out, confiding in the sisters that she suffers from crippling doubts and hated going up for her Oscar because she felt everyone was judging her.

One rainy night, Fausta calls Nicoletta to check she's okay, but she has already turned the tables on her abusive spouse when he had tried to tip her into the well. Alberta keeps receiving gifts from Cavani and is so preoccupied that she doesn't listen to Bianca when she discusses the train dress. However, she promises to sell an heirloom for Paolina after finding her son cowering in the button room and realising how expensive it must be for a single mum to put her child through school. Discovering the piece is worthless, Alberta tells Paolina that she'd like to keep it in return for helping with her son's expenses. At the same time, Silvana gives the boy her lucky charm.

Alberta allows Beatrice to stay late to work on some sketches because she has genuine talent. Despite being a costume short and up against a deadline, the sisters lunch with Aunt Olga and bump into Cavani at the restaurant. Gabriella insists on saying hello and is introduced to his wife, Rita (Loredana Cannata). She wonders if Alberta is her husband's friend from Paris and reveals that she had an accident there that left her in a wheelchair. But Alberta insists she's never been to Paris and, when she gets a quiet moment with Cavani, she touches his shoulder in forgiveness because she now knows why he stood her up all those years before.

During a smoking break, Nicoletta tells her friends that Bruno went out for cigarettes and never came back and they all know what must have happened and are pleased for her. However, they're all on edge when Gabriella mistakenly double-books Alida and Sofia and they have a slanging match about the former returning to the stage because she's too old to make films. Slamming the office door, Alberta threatens to fire Gabriella because she keeps making errors and isn't pulling her weight. She urges her to stop dwelling on her young daughter being run over and start living in the present. But Gabriella is hurt by the suggestion that she should snap out of it and help keep the business afloat, even though she knows she has to stop been paralysed by grief. Alberta runs after her when she leaves the studio and they hug.

Bianca apologises to the staff for Lorenzo's behaviour and admits he confuses her. She gives Beatrice one of her sketches as a memento and Gabriella has an idea. A few days later, during a sit-down lunch cooked by Silvana, the seamstresses slip away from the table one by one. Alberta notices them go, but isn't aware they are beavering away with red fabric and beads. She joins them with Bianca, who is thrilled to see her sketch coming to life and they work all night, with Sofia as their model, to finish the gown. She applauds them all, as she marvels at their creation.

Suddenly, the camera alights on Özpetek, who nods at the sleeping Silvana. He wanders around the empty atelier, as voices from the past echo around him. He sees Elena Sofia Ricci gliding between rooms. She smiles and reminds him that he had taught her that the only thing that matters is what remains inside us. Walking on, he opens a cupboard door and reaches in for the lucky glass sphere that Silvana had given to Paolina's son and he holds it up to the right-side lens of his glasses and looks at the audience.

Rooted in such Hollywood ensemble pieces as George Cukor's The Women (1939) and Sidney Lumet's The Group (1966), this is a splendidly involving drama that pieces together several vignettes to create more of a character study than a storyline. Some of the seamstress tales feel a bit novelettish, but Özpetek knows precisely what he's doing, as he has the score by Giuliano Taviani and Carmelo Travia ladle on the pathos when required. And, in an extra wink to the audience, he even repurposes the crux of Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember (1957) for the culmination of the Alberta/Cavani strand!

This is played, as is the entire picture, with impeccable good taste by a cast whose collusion in the mischief is made apparent during the opening luncheon. Indeed, they even feature in an occasional self-reflexive cutaway, as if to remind us that we are watching a film and that even they were affected by scenes like the one in which Gabriella's secret is revealed. Possibly Özpetek pushes this gambit too far by appearing during the all-nighter to look directly into the lens after checking up on the snoozing Silvana and then to encounter Elena Sofia Ricci on the deserted set before producing the keepsake that resembles the snow globe in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941).

Luisa Ranieri and Jasmine Trinca must be singled out for their exceptional performances, but mention should also be made of Vanessa Scalera as the insecure Bianca and Mara Venier as the den-mothering Silvana, who never seems to get ruffled. Unlike some of the marvellous costumes designed by Stefano Ciammitti, whose colours are vividly captured by cinematographer Gian Filippo Corticelli, who also captures with atmospheric finesse the light changes between the different rooms in Deniz Göktürk Kobanba's interiors.

Holding it all together is Özpetek, who is on Sacred Heart (2005) or Loose Cannons (2010) form here and it's a shame that UK audiences have been denied the chance to see acclaimed features like Saturn in Opposition (2007) and A Perfect Day (2008) and such recent (and more critically divisive) releases as Magnificent Presence (2012), Fasten Your Seatbelts (2014), Red Istanbul (2017), Naples in Veils (2018), The Goddess of Fortune (2019), and Nuovo Olimpo (2023), which would all grace a National Film Theatre retrospective.

BLUE ROAD: THE EDNA O'BRIEN STORY.

Journalist and film-maker Sinéad O'Shea already has two fine documentaries to her credit, A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot (2017) and Pray For Our Sinners (2022). But she's bound to reach her biggest audience to date with Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story, which profiles the complex and prolific Irish novelist, who died last year at the age of 93.

After an opening, name-dropping salvo celebrating Edna O'Brien's lavish London lifestyle at the height of her fame, we hark back to December 1930, when she was born in County Claire to farmer Michael O'Brien and his wife, Lena. She was in her mid-40s and initially resented young Edna, but came to cling to her. Fond of `the batter', Michael was a quarrelsome drunk and Edna used to head outdoors to commune with nature and make up stories.

Despite training to be a pharmacist, she longed to write and credited T.S. Eliot's Introducing James Joyce for showing her the way, although her first publications were columns in a railway magazine under the name `Sabiola'. She then met Ernest Gébler, a much older author whose 1950 tome, The Plymouth Adventure had been filmed in Hollywood with Spencer Tracy. When her disapproving family discovered their affair, they fled to the Isle of Man to stay with J.P. Donleavy, who fought their corner when Michael chartered a private plane and brought a priest, a cop, and her brother to fetch her home.

Sons Carlo and Sasha followed, but O'Brien's diary entries (read by Jessie Buckley) reveal her unhappiness and Gébler's tendency to annotate the entries with angry red ink references to her aunties as `six-toed trolls' and her mother as a `suspicious slit-eyed peasant'. When they moved to London, O'Brien wrote in secret and The Country Girls (1960) managed to draw on her past, but also reshaped the Irish novel with its exposure of male insecurity, attacks on the pillars of a conservative Catholic culture, and its insights into the ambitions and desires of young Irish women.

As we see clips from Desmond Davis's 1983 adaptation, writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa and academics Clair Wills and Maureen O'Connor sing its praises. In her 2023 interview with O'Shea, O'Brien admits to having been a devout child and claims that Our Lady had emerged from a picture in her bedroom and urged her to `keep good'. But the pact between state and church to keep women in their place was criticised in the book, which appalled O'Brien's parents, as well as several respected critics in thrall to Archbishop John McQuaid and morals minister Charles Haughey, who were as outraged by the concluding books in the trilogy, The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964) as Géber, who scrawled in the diaries that he was the brains behind them.

Furious that the likes of John Updike, Philip Roth, J.D. Salinger, and Arthur Miller had feted her, Géber grew jealous that his wife had outstripped him, especially when Desmond Davis directed Girl With Green Eyes (1964) from her second novel. Moreover, when she refused to endorse cheques to him, he grabbed her by the throat and she left the house. The boys chose to live with her and Géber signed `Your ex-father' on a farewell note.

Disappointed by Brian G. Hutton's take Zee and Co. (aka X, Y & Zee, 1972) - but delighted with the £39,000 cheque - O'Brien bought 10 Carlyle Square, where she held salon-style parties that attracted the likes of Princess Margaret, Judy Garland, Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim, Sean Connery, Paul McCartney, Shirley MacLaine, Marianne Faithfull, and Marlon Brando. Robert Mitchum seduced her, but Richard Burton failed, despite declaiming Shakespeare.

A favourite on literary programmes in Britain (often with an evidently disapproving Cliff Michelmore), she wrote a novel a year at her peak and Carlos and Sasha remember how hard she worked. In Ireland, however, she was mocked by misogynists like Kevin Myers, who avowed that he wanted to bury an axe in her head. Géber was in league with a tame journalist who wrote bile-filled denunciations and O'Brien admits that she was too scared to answer back in case she was silenced.

After Leslie Caron optioned August Is a Wicked Month (1965), O'Brien revisited her childhood in A Pagan Place (1970) and Night (1972) - which Carlo turned into a silent home movie - after consulting Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing, with whom she took LSD. Watching footage of herself with her elderly parents, O'Brien reveals that the trauma she suffered as a girl never left her and she wishes she'd been treated for it.

Her views on men are trenchantly outlined to Melvin Bragg, while she told Russell Harty that she picks the wrong types and wishes her life had been funnier. Diary entries detail her affair with a prominent married politician who is named only as Lochinvar and she resents being so smitten with someone who keeps her at a distance. Sasha suggests she invariably turned down the ones who adored her, but Carlo insists he knew nothing of the 72-month fling or his mother's appearance on the first Question Time in 1979, when she was experiencing writer's block for the first time.

This fallow patch coincided with a spending spree and O'Brien was forced to sell No.10 for £250,000. Within five years, it was worth £5 million and she admits to O'Shea that she has been foolish, even though she protests that she couldn't help being herself. Yet she was in the throes of committing suicide in Singapore on a book tour when a note from Sasha about a lunch date pulled her through. She returned as combative as ever, with the Northern Ireland trilogy of House of Splendid Isolation (1994), Down By the River (1996), and Wild Decembers (1999) ruffling feathers. Andrew O'Hagen lauds her ability to see all sides of a subject, whether she was writing about Bosnia in The Little Red Chairs (2015) or Boko Haram in Girl (2019).

Having fallen ill following the 2023 interview, O'Brien met O'Shea again during her final months. Speaking from a wheelchair, she regrets rarely being truly free, but would change nothing about her life. She wasn't the party girl of the 1970s and has fonder memories of her childhood, but she is glad that she will be joining her grandparents in a quiet cemetery on Lough Derg, where she will get some peace.

Closing with shots of a small boat crossing to Holy Island and the coffin making its final journey, this is a revealing portrait of an author who was constantly punished for being `born with the ability and the demon to write'. Striking a decent balance between biographical tattle and book talk, O'Shea shows how O'Brien's life inspired her work and earned her celebrity in Britain and America and notoriety in her native Ireland.

The archival chat show clips are compelling, but it's the interview with the frail, but still frank O'Brien that leaves the lingering impression of a woman who seemed to regret having regrets because they betrayed her younger self. Such is the potency and poignancy of these soundbites that the contributions of the assembled acolytes feel redundant. The recollections of O'Brien's sons are instructive, however, while Anne Enright offers an amusing definition of misogyny. The tribute paid by African American author Walter Mosley (who was taught by O'Brien at City College in New York) alludes to the passion for language that might have been explored in more detail. As might the `wilderness' years when O'Brien was broke and bereft of ideas, as it would have been nice to know where all her famous friends were during this problematic post-flibbertigibbet period.

Editor Gretta Ohle does a fine job of mosaicing the well-researched material, although the rewind of key events towards the end feels a little laboured. Jessie Buckley reads the diary extracts with a nuanced blend of dignity, despair, and defiance and it's interesting to compare the tone of the entries with the published prose that led to O'Brien being bestowed with the Saoithe of Aosdána, which was presented along with an apology from President Michael D. Higgins for the treatment meted out by the Irish state under Éamon de Valera. She endured a good deal of toxic masculinity in her time and it would be fascinating to learn the name of the MP who seems to have caused her more anguish than her feckless husband. Ultimately, she rose above everything by writing about it with a courage, tenacity, and elegance that made her the Irish Austen.

ESCAPE FROM EXTINCTION: REWIILDING.

Back in 2021, director Matthew R. Brady enlisted the help of Helen Mirren to put the case for zoos in Escape From Extinction. Now, he's coaxed another Oscar winner, Meryl Streep, to narrate Escape From Extinction: Rewilding, which similarly pays tribute to the scientists, veterinarians, and environmentalists striving to conserve endangered species and their habitats. Aptly, it's being released in the UK on World Earth Day.

In an opening montage, Streep outlines the problems caused by agriculture, fishing, logging, mining, and other forms of human activity, while the various specialists lament the number of animal species under threat of extinction and extol humankind to act now to prevent an ecological catastrophe. It's depressingly familiar stuff, but screenwriter Alex Vincent Blumberg decides to inject a note of positivity and takes us to Rwanda, where the effects of the 1990s civil war on the Akagera National Park are finally being offset by initiatives that benefit the indigenous population sufficiently to ensure its co-operation in the reintroduction of the lions, black rhinos, and other creatures needed to kickstart the region's wildlife tourist industry.

While European zoos have played a part in limiting in-breeding within species and reintroducing captive animals into the wild, the Mountain Gorillas of the Volcanoes National Park have bounced back from just 220 roaming the forests in the 1980s. With the locals now invested in protecting not poaching, they can expect to benefit from tourist revenues and, consequently, they have bought into a resettlement programme that will enable the park to expand and reinforce the restored ecosystem.

Semi-managed habitats also have a role to play, as in the forest in Bolivia that has been reclaimed from unproductive farmland. This is now home to the once-threatened Blue-Throated Macaw, whose numbers have increased since the introduction of nesting boxes.

The kelp forests of the Pacific Northwest play a key role in sustaining up to a thousand species, while also countering ocean acidification. Key to this success are the sea otters who are descended from a hardy colony that was found in 1938 and has helped restore stocks along the entire coast. The sea grass off Florida also plays a vital part in keeping waters clean, but rising temperatures are impacting on ocean ecosystems, endangering species like the snow crab. Much of the problem is down to algal blooms, which restrict the levels of sunlight that reach the replenishing grasses. However, local communities have taken to hoovering the sea bed to remove the algae and the manatee population has started to increase.

Wilding can have a negative effect if invasive species have no natural predators, as was the case in Australia with the cane toad. Foxes were also introduced to restrict rabbits, but they found it easier to hunt native species like the bandicoot and they were so decimated that they relied upon insurance stocks in zoos to repopulate on islands free of predators. In Colombia, the hippos from Pablo Escobar's private zoo have bred out of control in the nearby river, while elephant populations are destroying their habitats in certain parts of Africa - which raises the question of sustainable hunting.

Replacing species in areas of decline is also a risky business and we await news of an initiative to transplant African cheetahs into India will work. Another concern is invisible extinction, as variations within a population are under threat and geneticists are now working with conservationists to monitor stocks, while insurance schemes are under way at places like Chester Zoo with its Rothschild giraffe breeding programme.

Species like the Lear's macaw have been trained in a Spanish zoo to adapt to life in the Caatinga region of Brazil where numbers had plummeted. But environmental activism is a dangerous business, with 2000 having been killed over the last decade, with mining and logging companies being among the most ruthless. Ignorance is also a problem, with bats being misunderstood as crucial pollinators because people think about vampires.

Ending on a note of hope and a rallying cry for individual and collective action, this is a documentary with its heart completely in the right place. However, it spends so little time on each issue and cuts so restlessly between images that it often feels overwhelming. Granted, there's a lot of ground to cover and Brady and Blumberg are careful to include stories from each continent and to cover as many hot button topics as possible. But it's hard to take in so much information and opinion, especially when most viewers won't be familiar with the speakers or aware of their credentials.

The talking heads include Robin Ganzert, Bengt Holst, Debborah Luke, Caroline Lees, Brad Andrews, Eric Tsao, Ladis Ndahiriwe, Clément Lanthier, Mike Jordan, Jenny Gray, Wolfgang Kiessling, Christoph Kiessling, Bill Street, Kira Mileham, Sally Sherwen, Debra Erickson, Theo B. Pagel, and Jon Paul Rodríguez, and they all speak with passion. But their names and job titles are whisked off the screen almost as soon as they appear and the audience is left with no clue as to their seniority or area of expertise.

Editor Matt Faw is no more willing to linger on Eduardo Ramirez-Gonzalez's images, which becomes frustrating when he captures an animal's expression or interplay with a parent or sibling. Chihsuan Yang's omnipresent score, with its relentless drive and occasional passages of schmaltz, adds to the impression that we are being bombarded and emotionally manipulated rather than educated and persuaded.

This is an improvement on its predecessor, but the focus often strays from rewilding, while the blizzard of captions in the `What Can We Do' section is bewildering to the point of being unhelpful. All of which is a shame, as these messages need spreading more urgently than ever, especially when they contain much-needed pieces of good news.