Il Caimano

[mojosmom]

Yesterday, (oh, wait, it's one minute after midnight - so I guess I mean Friday), I saw this great movie! It's directed by Nanno Moretti, and totally disses Silvio Berlusconi. It's a "film within a film", about a producer, Bruno Bonomo, who hasn't made a movie since a commercial disaster, and is working on a movie about Christopher Columbus for RAI (Radiotelevisione Italia). At a screening of that commercial disaster, he is given a film script (the "Il Caimano" of the title) by a young woman, and when he reads it, he wants to make it. The director of the Columbus project quits, so he suggests Il Caimano to RAI, instead. They, of course, will have none of it, because it does dis Berlusconi, but he decides to go ahead with it anyway. There are all sorts of trials and tribulations, of course. At the same time, Bonomo and his wife are divorcing, and he is having a hard time dealing with that, too. It's a very funny film, but also a huge indictment of Berlusconi and Italian politics generally.

It showed at the Portland Film Festival, but I don't know that it's been generally released in the States (I saw it at Casa Italiana). Here's a link to a site in French about it.