The Thief, The Artist, The Boy, and The Chambermaid

La Passione

Carlo Mazzacurati

Well all right, if we are being pedantic its actually the thief, the archivist, the pensioner, the painter-fisherman, the chamber maid and a lad. These are the six characters featured in Mazzacurati’s Sei Venezia-Six Venice (s) or You are Venice, being its double meaning. Mazzacurati is famous for his movies, the most recent being Passione, also shown at the 2010 Venice Film Festival. La Passione sounds an interesting film. The synopsis is: “When you’re over fifty, it becomes increasingly difficult to be an up-and-coming director. Gianni Dubois knows this only too well. He hasn’t made a film for years, and now that he has the chance to direct a young TV star he can’t even think up an idea for a story.

As if this wasn’t enough, a leak in his apartment in Tuscany has ruined the 16th-century fresco in the chapel next door. To avoid being sued and publicly shamed, Gianni must accept the bizarre proposal of the town major to direct the Good Friday celebrations in exchange for immunity.
And so he finds himself spending a week in deepest Tuscany trying to put together a kind of Stations of the Cross, with the apostles, Pontius Pilate, the crucifixion, and a terrible and incredibly vain local actor in the part of Christ.”

But in Sei Venezia Mazzacurati chose to use his talents to portray Venice, sensitively and humorously. The documentary was premiered to critical acclaim at this year’s Venice film festival and goes on release in Italian with English subtitles. It starts off somewhat slowly, or so it seemed, and an attack of post prandial stupor had me nodding off in the heat while the artist-fisherman took centre stage. Thank God my snooze was short for I woke in time for the chambermaid, the thief and the boy, truly the stars of the show (the parts I saw anyway!).

The thief was a mix of pathos and humour, of unfailing positivity in the face of adversity. There are not many clear career paths for ex thieves. Becoming a cook, is often one. No one minds if you filch something from your pots. You are simply tasting, after all. But cooks these days tend to come from Eastern countries, according to our ex con, so that opportunity has largely gone in Venice. Amidst the tales of rooftop chases, after all there are few Garden fences to negotiate in Venice, we hear how the crime scene in Venice changed over the years with drug dealers moving in, and that this new trade was not to the taste of our ex con. By now he has fallen in love and had some children, before tragedy strikes and his bride dies young. But our ex con vows he is determined to continue to go straight, even if he cannot find work.

I am sure the lad will find work easily. Hopefully of the legal variety. Precocious, articulate, intelligent, he gives us the run down of his parent’s restaurant, their lifestyle and relationship. The line of the film surely must be: “ My mum really loves my dad, you can tell by the way she looks at him, but she could do better, she really could….’’

Verdict: a wonderful set of six cameos portraying life in Venice. Catch it if you can and please tell me whether the artist-fisherman was slow paced, or whether it simply coincided with my nap! For more articles on and information about Venice see veniceinfosite.com

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