Published by Phillip Bergson

Mar 01, 2019

Writing about Films and Festivals. Film Critic, UK,Invited Member of The UK Critics' Circle FIPRESCI abd the European Film Academy. Visiting Lecturer, Prague Film School. Winner of the "Student Journalist of the Year" competition...

Viva Italia! at Ciné Lumiere in London

With a sold-out curtain-raising preview of LORO, Paolo Sorrentino's latest Felliniesque politico-social vaudeville the latest Cinema Made in Italy launched its sunniest showcase of new Italian features in the Cine Lumiere, the French-owned art deco art-house in the heart of London's South Kensington arrondissement (running 26 February to 3 March 2019).

It was a day full of optimismo, after Signora May announced for the first time a potential delay to Brexit, and the whole of Albion basked in weather more usual in May than at the end of the UK's deeply discontented winter. Indeed, a record temperature of +20 deg Centigrade was recorded in not-too-distant Kew Gardens. Se non e vero e ben trovato.

A very fitting backdrop to the sardonic Sardinia-set satire of the rise and fall (and tumescence perhaps rather than further rise) of Silvio Berlusconi and his attendant follies and carnival of corruption and deceptions.