La Pivellina - Tizza Covvi / Rainer Frimmel (2009)

Everyone should see this film. Everyone should make this type of films. Human, simple, kind with its characters...  La Pivellina is like a cuddle.

The story is set somewhere in Rome, real people from the suburbs living in a trailer. Circus people who survive as they can. Patti and her red hair is all heart. Adorable. There are no words to describe how amazing that little girl is. The work they've done to make such a young child act is really impressive. She is the film.

Some people like to call it neo-neorealism, I prefer to see it as a fiction with the aesthetics of a documentary. It seems to have been filmed in a documentary way. The camera is a close witness, not an intrusive one, a friendly viewer in the middle of this world. It's like the camera of the Dardenne brothers... only gentle, warm and loving.

The sound is also borrowed from the documentary. Ambiences, the world they are in. Everything is diegetic. What I like the most is that there is no mood music, there's really no need for it.

The narrative is linear. The story and the characters are enough to keep us engaged. No need for any artifice.

I saw this film some time ago and it touched my heart. Months later, it still works. It's still as touching as the first time.

La Pivellina 

Habemus Papam - Nanni Moretti (2011)

We all expect something from a film. Even if we don't know exactly what. Perhaps because there's something that made us think we'd watch it. 

It took me a while to figure what was it that I expected from this film and why I didn't get that. 

The plot sounds simple and attractive enough: there's an elected Pope who doesn't want to assume his role (so they find him a psychologist to help him). Fair enough. 

The problem is that the film isn't that. 

It's meant to be a satire of some sort. But it's not. It could be consideered a dramatic comedy, it has funny moments, but it all goes wrong at the end. 

Michel Piccoli saves the film. I think he does capture the feelings the character has. He's a very nice old man, with a something in his eyes. He's not over the top either. He is really suffering. 

And Jerzy Stuhr! Okay I just recognised him. He's changed a lot since his films with Kieslowski. He's a great actor and here is very good here too. If the story had been about the man who doesn't want to be the Pope and the man whose job is to convince him that he must... that would have been a completely different and excellent film.


It's a very visually attractive film, the photography and art and very nicely done. The sound... has one or two good moments... with a terrible terrible music moment. They picked a nice song and put it in the middle of a sequence meaning nothing but something that was put there just because. 

The psychologist (played by the director) shouldn't have been there. He's not likeable, he doesn't have an important role in the drama, he's not even funny... It makes it a completely different picture and a much less interesting one too. 


The ending... well I think the film had lost me long before but it's just terrible. I think the script suffered from a lack of direction and in the end it went nowhere.

"A story centered on the relationship between the newly elected Pope and his therapist." No, not really. But this wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't such a boring film in the end.

Habemus Papam