Author Topic: "Mine Vaganti" "Loose cannons" - New gay themed Italian Movie  (Read 22198 times)

Offline sel

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"Loose cannons" "Mine Vaganti" premiered at the last Berlin Film Festival.  I cannot find a trailer with English subtitles, not yet. It will open in Italy on 12th March. The leads characters are played by very well known Italian actors (that is well known in Italy).
I cannot understand WHY in Italy same sex couples are not allowed to marry as we have had divorce and abortion for many years.

http://www.i-italy.org/13459/whose-family-values

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2lQOhQ2es8[/youtube]

Director Ferzan Ozpetek’s new film challenges Italian attitudes

As the so-called culture wars of the past few decades have shown, “the family” is an ideological construct – and political weapon – as much as it is a social arrangement.  American conservatives don’t much like public policies that would actually strengthen families stressed by economic woes, but they love to preach about “family values” and to condemn those – gays and lesbians, feminists, leftists – whom they view as “anti-family.”
 
In Italy, the Vatican and its allies on the political right and center-left follow a similar script,insisting that the State uphold – and enforce -- conservative Catholic values about family and sexuality. Hardly a day goes by that some bishop isn’t denouncing attempts to give legal recognition to same-sex couples as an attack on the sacrosanct family, and that some opportunistic politician isn’t applauding that bishop.
 
So when a popular Italian filmmaker presents a different view of family values, one that challenges conservative and Catholic ideology, it’s a culturally significant event. Ferzan Ozpetek, the openly gay, Turkish-born director who calls himself “Italian by adoption,” has done just that with his latest film, Mine vaganti (Loose Cannons). But the film, which opens in Italy this month, also challenges the belief, once foundational to feminism and gay liberation, that the family is inherently oppressive, a domestic dictatorship.
 
The British poet Philip Larkin famously wrote, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.  They may not mean to, but they do.” Mine vaganti, while acknowledging that families can do damage, asserts that for gay children, familial bonds can be nurturing -- even liberating.
 
Or at any rate, that the ties of blood and love are too tenacious to be easily severed.
 
Mine vaganti centers on the bourgeois Cantone family, owners of a pastificio (pasta factory) in the southern Italian city of Lecce. The youngest son, Tommaso (played by Riccardo Scamarcio, currently one of Italy’s most popular romantic leads), returns from his studies in Rome. He confesses to his brother Antonio that he has been studying literature in order to become a writer, rather than business, as his family believed. He also tells Antonio that he is gay, and that he intends to come out to the rest of the family. But that evening, at dinner, Antonio trumps him by announcing to la famiglia – parents, grandmother, aunt, sister and Tommaso -- that he is gay, and that his lover is one of the employees of the family pastificio.
 
The shocked and infuriated patriarch Vincenzo suffers a heart attack. Tommaso must put his  own revelations on hold and take over the family business, something he has been trying to escape his entire life.  Besides assuming this unwanted responsibility, he has to deal with the fallout from Antonio’s unexpected disclosure, including gossipy neighbors, and confront his parents’ prejudices. And then three of his gay friends arrive from Rome, complicating matters further.
 
Ozpetek’s recent films have been somber, even melodramatic. But, according to Italian and European critics, Mine vaganti is in the tradition of commedia all’italiana, a genre whose best films seamlessly blended comedy and incisive social commentary. (The film was shown at the Berlin Film Festival in February.)
 
One critic, however, compared Ozpetek’s film to the work of another European auteur. In the online journal Screendaily.com, Lee Marshall wrote, “With its themes of family secrets, oddball character parts, bittersweet tone and sunny outlook, this is the easily the most Almodòvar-esque of all Ozpetek’s films.”
 
In several of the director’s earlier works, like Hammam (also known as Steam) and Le Fate ignoranti (released abroad as His Secret Life), gays and lesbians are estranged from their families of origin and often marginalized by societal bigotry. They form new families with each other. But as Ozpetek said in a recent interview, “After my father’s death, I started to look at relations between parents and children in a new light.”  In Mine vaganti, the gay sons don’t flee their family; the battles for understanding and acceptance are waged on the home turf.

Ozpetek, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ivan Cotroneo, says the film’s theme “isn’t homosexuality but the parent-child relationship, and the difficulty of self-knowledge and self-acceptance. The focus is on a family that I know – I always start from personal experiences. It’s a family from the provinces, Lecce in the film, but it could be in any town in the world.”
 
But the film is indeed set in Italy, and in the south, where conservative attitudes towards family and sexual morality purportedly prevail. Homophobia, though, is hardly limited to any one part of the bel paese. The north and center have seen their share of anti-gay politics and violent hate crimes. One of the film’s stars, Ennio Fantastichini, who plays Vincenzo Cantone, views Mine vaganti as a very Italian story.
 
“I, too, as a father, would like to see this country change,” he said, “so that it is no longer preoccupied with people’s sexual orientations or religious beliefs, which in my opinion are private matters, and that we should get back to understanding that the world is full of people who are more or less wonderful, more or less intelligent, and, above all, that the main question you should ask your children is, ‘are you happy’ or ‘are you unhappy’?”
 
Federico Brusadelli, a writer for the online magazine FareFuturo, said Fantaschini’s comments were a breath of fresh air “in a country that continues to brandish ‘The Family’ as a weapon of war, too often forgetting that The Family, in uppercase, doesn’t exist. There are instead many families…and whether they are married or living together, homosexual or heterosexual, would, in a more normal country, matter very little.”
 
Mine vaganti (Loose Cannons) was produced by Fandango in collaboration with Rai Cinema. It opens in Italy on March 12, 2010. Plans for U.S. distribution have yet to be announced.
« Last Edit: April 09, 2010, 06:13:24 am by sel »
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Re: "Mine Vaganti" "Loose cannons" - New gay themed Italian Movie
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2010, 02:32:27 pm »
Thanks, sel!  Looks very interesting. 

Does "Mine Vaganti" literally mean "drifting mines"?  I guess "Loose Cannons" is a pretty good translation.

Offline sel

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Re: "Mine Vaganti" "Loose cannons" - New gay themed Italian Movie
« Reply #2 on: March 10, 2010, 02:54:32 pm »
Hi Paul! Yes, it does. The movie is advertised on TV. Judging from what I have read so far, the trailer and the cast I'd say it should be a pretty good movie.
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Offline sel

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Re: "Mine Vaganti" "Loose cannons" - New gay themed Italian Movie
« Reply #3 on: April 09, 2010, 06:12:52 am »
Apologies, apologies, apologies. This film is NOT set  in the 60s, it is set in 2010. Right now I have no idea where I got that from. I have corrected my other post.
After reading many  positive comments by movie goers I went to see it this week, and I found it to be a very enjoyable movie. Obviously I don't know how some of the lines, jokes  will be translated. Will they lose some meaning? A risk, IMHO, worth taking. A nice story, very interesting characters, very good actors, I thought the older ones in particular gave an excellent performance. Ozpetek, who is Turkish, shows an excellent understanding of Italy. The story is filmed in the beautiful town of Lecce, located in the Southern region of Puglia (Italy being in the shape of a boot, Puglia is the heel). Also really enjoyed the music/songs in it.
This movie will give viewers  a taste of Southern Italy, of which directly I have little knowledge myself.

Mine Vaganti will be in competition  at the next Tribeca Film Festival, Apr 21st - May 2nd, thus we should soon be able to have the English trailer.

http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/loose_cannons-film30788.html

The film is  rated for  viewers of any age. I thought how nice it was that a couple of rows in front of me there was a family, the  two parents and a young teenage son.
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Offline sel

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Re: "Mine Vaganti" "Loose cannons" - New gay themed Italian Movie
« Reply #4 on: May 03, 2010, 04:55:58 am »
Mine Vaganti - Loose Cannons was awarded a Special Jury Mention at the Tribeca Film Festival: 

http://www.tribecafilm.com/festival/features/2010_Tribeca_Film_Festival_Award_Winners.html

Following is an interview of Fetzan Ozpetek about the movie:

http://www.tribecafilm.com/festival/features/Faces_of_the_Festival_Ferzan_Ozpetek.html

Meet Ferzan Ozpetek, the director of the delightful Italian family comedy Loose Cannons. Lovely southern Italy landscapes + swoony Italian actors—sounds like a recipe for La Dolce Vita.

Ferzan Ozpetek: Loose Cannons is a film about family secrets, some of which are open but unacknowledged, others that are truly hidden and very surprising when they finally surface. Tommaso, fantastically interpreted by Riccardo Scamarcio, who has created his own life in Rome, goes home to Lecce in Southern Italy for a family party where his father intends to hand over the family firm to him and his brother. But as it turns out, not everything is what it seems. Not only does Tommaso have to stay for much longer than he had thought, he also has to come to terms with who he is and who he wants to be.

TribecaFilm.com: What inspired you to tell this story?

FO: A lot of my work deals with different angles on the concept of family, both the biological one you are born into and the one you build for yourself as you grow up. Loose Cannons began with an idea about something that actually happened to a friend of mine. It started off with a confession-revelation between two brothers, an event which almost destroyed my friend. Loose Cannons is a very personal film. I have dedicated it to my father who passed away a year ago, perhaps because having reached 50, I felt some kind of need to look back, to re-evaluate my relationship with my own parents and family that shares some aspects with the story I tell.

TribecaFilm.com: What's the craziest thing (or "lightning strikes" moment) that happened while making the film?

FO: There wasn't so much a particular moment, but rather an intense process of falling in love. The film is set in the Apulian town of Lecce, a place I visited for the first time eight years ago and simply fell in love with. There is a marvelous atmosphere in Lecce with the beauty of its architecture, the surrounding landscape, and the excellent food, all of which chimed with the story. It is very rich in traditions, just like the family in the story, and the setting became almost an additional character. I have to say that following this Lecce experience, I feel stronger; so many new people have entered my life, many new friends from the Salento area who I hope will continue to be a part of my life for a long time.

TribecaFilm.com: What's the biggest thing you learned while making Loose Cannons?

FO: You have got to trust your actors! I didn't exactly learn this only now, but the sense of the script as a collaboration was especially strong with Loose Cannons. Before starting the shoot, I wrote the screenplay with Ivan Cotroneo, who came to the set while I was filming in Apulia, and together we changed some dialogue and scenes according to the mood on the set. There were various modifications and rewrites as well as a fair amount of improvisation. I was lucky to have such a stellar cast of actors who I could sometimes tell to run with their scenes, and some of the funniest scenes are theirs as much as mine or Ivan's.

TribecaFilm.com: What's your advice for aspiring filmmakers?

FO: Put your heart in everything you do and take the long view. I was fortunate to have a long apprenticeship as assistant directors with many outstanding but very different filmmakers from Mario Bava to Marco Risi or Massimo Troisi. But I also had to wait into my mid-thirties for the chance to direct my first feature, Hamam (The Turkish Bath). Sometimes, it takes patience.

TribecaFilm.com: What are your hopes for the film at Tribeca? How do you think New York audiences will respond?

FO: New York is one of the big creative centers of the world, and to me it has always felt like a special privilege to be represented here. Most of my films were released in the US, and New York especially has always been very hospitable to my work. I hope the same holds for Loose Cannons. There is a specific Mediterranean atmosphere about the film that I hope the Tribeca audience will relate to. At the same time, its story is universal—everybody has a family, and everybody has to realize who they are in this context, positively, negatively, or ambiguously. And I hope people will laugh because even though it deals with serious issues, the film is a about life's absurdities, too. It is a true comedy of manners.

TribecaFilm.com: If you could have dinner with any filmmaker (alive or dead), who would it be?

FO: If I can dream, it would be two of the greats: Michael Powell and Vittorio de Sica. That should make for very interesting dinner conversation.

TribecaFilm.com: What piece of art (book/film/music/tv show/what-have-you) are you currently recommending to your friends most often?

FO: Well, let's do the first three: Hungarian-Swiss writer Agota Kristof's trilogy The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie, an amazingly evocative novel about Central Europe at war; French director Jacques Audiard's tough film A Prophet; the song Kutlama by Turkish pop diva Sezen Aksu.

TribecaFilm.com: What would your biopic be called?

FO: An Italian critic recently was kind enough to call a monograph about my work so far Ad Occhi Aperti (With Open Eyes). I hope that is true about my life, too.

TribecaFilm.com: What makes Loose Cannons a Tribeca must-see?

FO: It's a comedy, and audiences in all screening so far laughed a lot, but it's not an escapist fantasy. I certainly don't try to teach anything in the film, but in addition to being amused, the audience might still learn something – about their own relationships with their family and their friends, about what it means or does not mean to be gay in a society that still has problems to come to terms with homosexuality. And last but not least, I think Tribeca audiences cannot afford to miss the performance of the ensemble cast. Most actors in Loose Cannons are major stars in their own right in Italy, and the way they pulled together really made the film.




And, finally, the trailer with English subtitles (as the video is not a YouTube one I don't know how to make it clickable, please click on the link below), however, this trailer differs from the Italian one, which I prefer:

http://www.tribecafilm.com/videos/Loose_Cannons_Trailer.html?page_type=small 
 
 
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Re: "Mine Vaganti" "Loose cannons" - New gay themed Italian Movie
« Reply #5 on: June 17, 2010, 10:20:30 pm »
I'm seeing this on Saturday!  It's playing at the Provincetown Film Festival!  Yay!

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Re: "Mine Vaganti" "Loose cannons" - New gay themed Italian Movie
« Reply #6 on: June 20, 2010, 12:56:42 am »
Just got back, and this was very enjoyable.  A real crowd-pleaser here.  A very strong ensemble cast.  Funny, serious and moving. 

It's like "Moonstruck" meets Almodovar meets "La cage aux folles". 

Thanks, sel, for the recommendation.  I hope it gets a wider viewing in the US. 

Offline sel

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Re: "Mine Vaganti" "Loose cannons" - New gay themed Italian Movie
« Reply #7 on: June 22, 2010, 04:01:44 am »
Hi Paul! Thank you for reporting back. I'd like to see it with the English subtitles. Inevitably something will have been lost.
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Re: "Mine Vaganti" "Loose cannons" - New gay themed Italian Movie
« Reply #8 on: June 22, 2010, 02:32:21 pm »

Here's Riccardo

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Re: "Mine Vaganti" "Loose cannons" - New gay themed Italian Movie
« Reply #9 on: June 22, 2010, 05:42:18 pm »
I have it saved to my netflix queue when it come available. Thanks Sel!
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