Cast: Nanni Moretti
Director: Nanni Moretti
Producers: Nanni Moretti, Angelo Baragallo, Nella Banfi
Screenplay: Nanni Moretti
Cinematography: Giuseppe Lanci
Music: Nicola Piovani
U.S. Distributor: Fine Line Features
In Italian with subtitles
In Italy, Nanni Moretti is a cult figure. His films, while not blockbusters, draw a large enough audience to make them profitable, and he has developed a substantial fan base. Moretti's eighth feature, Caro Diario, becomes his first to receive a commercial release in North America. While it remains to be seen how audiences on this side of the Atlantic will react to this "Italian Woody Allen", it's safe to say that quite a bit of what makes his films special gets lost in the translation.
Part travelogue, part monologue, and part story, Caro Diario is a muddled jumble of sometimes-conflicting elements. Moretti is really the only character of note in the entire film, and it's not clear how much of the story is autobiographical and how much is fictional.
Caro Diario is divided into three chapters, each which represents a short film of different tone and content. The first, "On My Vespa", details Moretti's motor scooter journey through an empty Rome. Along the way, he discusses his views on film (complete with clips from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer), expresses his admiration for Jennifer Beals (then, by chance, meets her and director Alex Rockwell), and talks about how he would like to make a film about houses. Visually, with its impressive shots of the city and long sequences of Moretti riding his Vespa, this is probably the most impressive part of the film. It is also the least engaging.
In "Islands", Moretti and his friend, Gerardo (Renato Carpentieri), go on a trip through the Eolie Islands. On Lipari, there's a wonderful comic scene about children taking over the telephones. On Stromboli, in the shadow of a volcano, the supposedly-intellectual Gerardo betrays his fascination with television when he asks questions of American tourists about a soap opera. And, on Alicudi, Gerardo flees when he discovers that the island of self-abnegation has no electricity.
"Doctors" chronicles Moretti's countless visits to specialists as he attempts to uncover the cause of a skin irritation. After the condition is mis-diagnosed about a half-dozen times, and treatments from creams and pills to acupuncture are recommended, someone finally figures out that the film maker is suffering from Lymphoma -- a curable cancer (Moretti is currently in remission).
Much of Caro Diario is devoted to examinations of the Italian lifestyle, and a lot of the satire and humor come through those observations. For American viewers, however, the wit is lacking and many of the jokes end up sounding either unfunny or self-indulgent. The film has its moments -- like when it pokes fun at certain universal pop icons -- but there are too few of them.
Monologues can be difficult to sustain (Spalding Gray's Monster in a Box is a rare exception), and this in part accounts for many of the lulls in Caro Diario. When Moretti is interacting with other people, the movie has some energy. Otherwise, it grinds almost to a halt. The tone is uneven, with the first two chapters complimenting each other, but the third seeming out-of-place.
The American audience for Caro Diario is certain to be small, and the group of enthusiasts even smaller. There are moments that sparkle, but the whole is not a worthy sum of its parts, and, while much of what Moretti does is interesting, that doesn't mean that it's enjoyable. The auteur's appeal may be widespread overseas, but in this part of the world, it's likely to be extremely narrow.
© 1994 James Berardinelli