Parky At the Pictures (5/12/2025)

(Reviews of Un sacco bello; and Folktales)

UN SACCO BELLO.

CinemaItaliaUK ends its year with something of a treat, as it screens Carlo Verdone's debut feature, Un sacco bello/Fun Is Beautiful (1980) at the Regent Street Cinema on 7 December. Co-produced by Sergio Leone and scored by Ennio Morricone, this episodic comedy earned Verdone (who has, of course, gone on to be one of Italy's finest film-makers) a special David di Donatello Award and the Nastro d'Argento for Best New Actor.

It's Ferragosto and Enzo (Carlo Verdone) adores himself in the mirror as he selects a medallion to wear with his open-chested black shirt. He has planned a trip to Krakow to seduce Polish girls with nylons. But travelling companion Sergio (Renato Scarpa) is having second thoughts and takes it as a sign when Enzo's souped up sports car breaks down in the Roman traffic, where the hippyish Ruggero (Verdone) is doling out leaftlets about a commune in Città della Pieve to motorists stuck at the traffic lights.

One of the drivers turns out to be Ruggero's father, Mario (Mario Brega), who insists on taking him for a coffee with his companion, Fiorenza (Isabella De Bernardi). They nearly run over Leo (Verdone) on a zebra crossing and he is wondering what to do with his spilt groceries, when he's asked for directions to a youth hostel by a Spanish tourist, Marisol (Veronica Miriel). A socially awkward chatterer, Leo offers her a chance to shower and take a nap when there prove to be no vacancies. But he can't make her understand that he has to catch a bus to spend the holiday with his domineering mother. With the landlady snooping to catch him with a visitor and Marisol distressed after the break up of her romance, Leo raises his eyes to the heavens in the hope of some divine intervention.

Meanwhile, Enzo boasts about picking up a young girl at a gig, while Sergio implores him to stop the car because he is feeling nauseous. He rolls around on the road, leaving Enzo to despair about getting to Poland on time. Back in Rome, Ruggero arrives at the family home to be confronted with Don Alfio (Verdone), the parish priest who wants to talk to him about his alternative lifestyle. Mario becomes apoplectic as Ruggero describes how he had a Damascene moment in Florence and threw all of his clothes into the Arno. He then met a man who who watched over him while he slept in the woods and pointed him in the direction of the commune where he met Fiorenza. Furious with the priest for indulging Ruggero's drippy ideas and with Fiorenza for calling him a Fascist when he is a Communist, Mario phones the Professor (Verdone) and asks him to come over and talk some sense into his son.

Leo takes Marisol to the city zoo and is appalled by the price of peanuts to feed the monkeys. Struggling to communicate, the pair wander round the empty walkways and lament that it's too hot for the animals to come out. Marisol inquires about Leo's job as an electrical engineer and asks if he is ever overcome by waves of sadness. Suddenly, she disappears (with a splash) and Leo makes all the animals bellow by running round calling her name at the top of his voice. He finds her combing her hair by a tree and they lie on the grass to let the world go by - with Leo even managing to get the animals to shut up with an exasperated appeal.

Enzo takes Sergio to the nearest hospital, where he entertains some of the orderlies and patients with tale of his gallivanting. It's decided that Sergio needs an emergency operation and Enzo is appalled to discover that he has a wife tucked away and is terrified about what she will say if she finds out he was planning to go to Krakow. Back at the Brega residence, Mario is beginning to wish he'd not invited the Professor, as he has turned up in his bathrobe and seems intent on reminiscing about raising his own son and fulminating about the amount of pornography on television.

Leo cooks pasta for Marisol, who persuades him to open his mother's special bottle of wine. They start to eat on the balcony, but she wants music and they wander into his bedroom, where Marisol strums Leo's guitar before stretching out on the bed. She beckons him to sit beside her and he is closing in for a kiss when the doorbell rings. He fears it's the landlady, but it's Marisol's artist boyfriend, Antioco (Fausto Di Bella) and Leo is forced to watch as they slap each other's faces in making up. Marisol sends him to fetch some grapefruit juice for Antioco to drink and Leo realises that his chance has gone.

While Enzo goes through the handful of names in his phone book to find someone to join him in Krakow, Mario invites nephew Anselmo (Verdone) to talk to Ruggero, as he is no closer to making him see what he considers to be sense. However, he taps numbers into a calculator while trying to explain how much his life has improved since he got married and Ruggero can barely keep his eyes open, as he witters on. Erupting with frustration, Mario curses all three of his guests for being no use whatsoever.

Across the city, Leo returns with the grapefruit juice to find the apartment empty. He fields an angry call from his mother and promises to join her the next day. He slumps on his bed, as does Enzo, who suddenly leaps up on remembering the name of a vague acquaintance and he looks up his number in the directory. As Mario drops Ruggero and Fiorenza back at the bridge - where their friend Cristiano (Sandro Ghiani) has spent the day minding their bikes - a bomb goes off and all three men shrug it off as an occupational hazard of living in Rome.

The following morning, Enzo hooks up with his scrawny pal and seems pleased that he is sufficiently docile to take orders. As they zoom off to Poland, Leo manages to avoid a collision with a scooter on the crossing and teeters towards the bus stop so he can spend the day with his mother. Life goes on.

Anyone who used to watch Stanley Baxter's Christmas specials and marvel at the chameleonic talent, while wishing that the writing had been funnier will experience a similar feeling when viewing this satirical showcase. Having made his name on stage and television as a man of many faces, Carlo Verdone belonged more to the Baxter and Dick Emery school of character creation than the more nuanced coterie that included Alec Guinness, Alberto Sordi, and Peter Sellers. Thus, while there's much to amuse in the keenly observed mannerisms of the strutting Enzo, the flower-powered Ruggero, and the cosseted Leo, Don Alfio, the Professor, and Anselmo come closer to caricature and - despite the technical ingenuity of getting all four portrayals in as single process shot - it's hard to avoid thinking that Verdone spread himself a little thin during Ruggero's prolonged pep talk, especially when everyone is so roundly upstaged by Mario Brega's splendidly blustering father.

Forty-five years after the film's release, the social humour no longer has the contemporaneity that so impressed the critics in 1980. But it has acquired a time capsule feel that makes it historically valuable for its insights into the shifting attitudes that were dividing a country emerging from the Years of Lead. Verdone and co-writers Leonardo Benvenuti and Piero De Bernardi particularly linger on the power of the Catholic Church, the legacy of clashing political ideologies, respect for parental authority, and the changing role of women. But the wit often feels subordinate to the characterisation.

One thing that hasn't aged, however, is the Ennio Morricone soundtrack, which feels in places as though sitcom theme tunes had been woven together to comment on the characters and their circumstances. It says much for Verdone that he was prepared to take on six roles in his directorial debut, but it would be interesting to know what role the uncredited Sergio Leone played in proceedings, especially as he continued to collaborate with his prodigy on Bianco, rosso e Verdone (1981), in which he also played three characters), and on his teamings with Alberto Sordi on In viaggio con papà (1982) and Troppo forte (1986).

FOLKTALES.

Over the last 15 years, documentarists Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady have examined the right to choose in 12th & Delaware (2010), the decline of Detroit in Detropia (2012), the Hasidic legacy in One of Us (2017), and violence against journalists in Endangered (2022). Yet they remain best known for The Boys of Baraka (2005) and the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp (2006) and they return to the theme of education and the development of young minds in Folktales, which takes us 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

Still grieving the loss of her father, 19 year-old Hege Birch Wik has decided to spend a year learning survival skills and dog-sledding at the Norwegian Folk High School in Pasvik, which is situated in Finnmark. Principal Ketil Foss welcomes the students, who are informed by tutor Iselin Breivold that the plan is to awaken their Stone Age brain in order to help them cope better in the modern world.

Bjørn Tore Maseide admits that he finds making friends difficult, as he can be as annoying as he is nerdily nice. He finds a kindred spirit in Romain Le Biannic, a Dutch lad who combines being shy with insecurity. However, sled instructor Thor-Atle Svortevik pairs him up with a dog who is also reserved and is pleased to see them forging an immediate bond. However, Bjørn Tore struggles when it comes time to put a harness on his dog and he becomes tearful, as does Hege when she speaks to her grandfather on the phone after a night camping under canvas in the rain, as she is finding it tough to get used to so many new things at once.

We see the students taking sleds out in deep snow and eavesdrop on some of their lessons, which range from the scholastic to the practical and the artistic. On a two-day camping trip, Romain has difficulty making a fire and collecting snow to cook and Thor-Atle and Iselin have to be firm with him when he threatens to sulk in order to convince him that he has the wherewithal to survive in the forest. Of course, he does and they praise him for being honest enough to show his emotions. They also commend Hege on her camp and remind her that humans have been sleeping under the stars and staring into their fires since the dawn of time and that she should use the quiet to stop overthinking things and find her inner peace.

Romain chats to Hege while he practices building fires back at the school. He apologises for being boring and she reassures him that he's doing well. Bjørn Tore also tries to keep up his spirits. But he doesn't return for a second term and Bjørn Tore wishes he'd done more to make him feel part of things. He reveals that he cried when he learned from a TV programme that the sun would die and Hege feels cursed by bad luck when her beloved sled dog, Sautso, dies of cancer. She spends lots of time with him and reflects on the fact her father was taken suddenly, as a man struck him on the back of the head following an argument.

She has thrown herself into the programme and admits she rarely looks at her phone. As the months of darkness end with a light ceremony. Romain returns to complete the course because he had missed Norway and found daily life back in the Netherlands so pointless. He survives an ice plunge and pals up with Bjørn Tore, with whom he makes a commercial for gloves as part of a class assignment. Warm clothing will be essential for the next trek and Thor-Atle reminds the students that they have to stay warm for their dogs, as they depend on their humans being fully functional.

Leading their dog teams, Romain and Hege have a wonderful time, even though the former takes a spill. Iselin is riding behind him and she notices how much more relaxed he is and his excitement is evident when he sees a moose and its calf in the woods. Drone shots show the sled teams against the snow, while cut-ins to the lolling tongues of the dogs captures the effort and the enjoyment they get out of working.

The last week of school arrives and there are tears at the graduation ceremony. Iselin tells Romain how proud she is that he made it through and Bjørn Tore hopes they can stay in touch. They have a last cuddle with their dogs and get even more emotional. After struggling to re-acclimatise to life in the city, Hege takes a job at a sled dog kennel, while Bjørn Tore so enjoys his military service that he considers a career in the navy. Romain hopes to return to Norway, but they all feel better equipped to deal with whatever life throws at them. A closing shot shows a tree wrapped in red yarn to symbolise the gifts of knowledge, wisdom, and storytelling that the Norns dwelling beside Yggdrasil (the tree of life) promised to bestow upon Odin. It's a theme that has recurred throughout the film, with strands being wound around various trunks to mark the three students making progress. But it not only feels contrived as a final image; it's also rather twee.

Cinematographers Lars Erlend Tubaas Øymo and Tor Edvin Eliassen take full advantage of the blanketing beauty of the snowy environs, the ethereality of the Northern Lights, and the adorableness of the Siberian Huskies. Sound designer Bennett Kerr also places the viewer in the heart of the Arctic locale. But Nathan Punwar's editing is often fussy and dictated more by linking pretty pictures than chronicling the journey of the three vulnerable teenagers who have come to Pasvik in search of answers to get them through the isolating hell of adolescence. This is entirely the fault of Ewing and Grady, however, who are usually so good at nailing a place and the personalities of the people who inhabit it. Here, they provide little context for either the school or their troubled subjects. We learn nothing about the history of the institution or how it operates. Indeed, we see little of the daily routine and how the students spend their time when they're not sledding, camping, or petting their dogs.

It's all very impressionistic, with montages of archly arty clips preventing any in-depth reportage. More might have been shown of the charismatic instructors in action, while we get little sense of the camaraderie between the students because the focus is so consistently narrow. A bit more input from home might also have been valuable in order to assess parental expectation of a nine-month residential course that clearly doesn't come cheap. Consistently visually striking and occasionally affecting, this is a puzzlingly superficial study, which is frustrating, as the topic has so much potential.