Antonella Attili Movies
With Quiet Chaos (Caos Calmo), acclaimed Italian helmer Nanni Moretti steps away from his standard directorial role to essay the lead and co-author the script in a gentle psychological drama directed by Antonello Grimaldi. Moretti stars as Pietro, a film executive whose life takes an irreversible and devastating turn one fateful morning. During a trip to the beach with his brother, Pietro's path intersects with that of a woman, Eleonora (Isabella Ferrari), who is drowning in the ocean; horrified, Pietro rushes in to save her. He subsequently returns home only to discover that his wife, Lara, just died in a nasty falling accident; devastated to the core, this nascent widower must make the necessary psychological accommodations to adjust to life as a single parent, with sole responsibility for raising his ten-year-old daughter, Claudia (Blu Yoshimi). Almost instinctively, as a reaction to Lara's death, Pietro opts to sit and wait for his daughter to finish school each day (in a park across from the school), in lieu of abandoning her to his own priorities and commitments. This means that the fellow's colleagues in the film industry must, by necessity, come to do business with him in the park. Through it all, Pietro remains silently dumbfounded that the tragedy itself hasn't shaken him more, that the grief (the "quiet chaos" of the title) is subtly agonizing instead of grossly traumatizing and debilitating. Nevertheless, he ultimately begins to approach a full realization and acceptance of his loss, and gains an enhanced awareness of himself and others from the potentially crippling events thrust into his path. Valeria Golino (Rain Man) co-stars; Roman Polanski appears in a cameo as one of Pietro's industry colleagues. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nanni Moretti, Valeria Golino, (more)
- 2002
Out of work in 1964, Romano Amato (Gigi Savoia) packs up his young family and heads to Duisburg, Germany, in hopes for a better future for them. Shortly after arriving, Romano takes a job mining coal but quickly loses interest in that endeavor. His wife, Rosa, (Antonella Attili) takes matters into her own hands and opens an Italian restaurant, Solino, named after the small town in Italy from which they moved. As Romano and Rosa focus nearly all of their attention on the somewhat successful Solino, their young sons, Gigi and Giancarlo, are forced to fend for themselves as they acclimate to their new country, developing their own interests and hobbies in the meanwhile. Ten years later, with the boys now young men, Romano spells out his intentions of having Gigi and Giancarlo join him in the family business, but neither have much interest in the industry. As the family sorts out its disagreements, each family member tries to come to terms with their Italian heritage, as well as with their roles in German society. Solino was screened in the German Cinema program for the 2003 Berlin International Film Festival. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barnaby Metschurat, Moritz Bleibtreu, (more)
- 2002
Italian director Marco S. Piccioni's Quello Che Cerchi (What Are You Looking For) takes a provate eye named Impero (Marcello Mazzarella) for a main character. He is burning out on life and his job when the wife of a married couple that used to be good friends with him hires Impero to spy on their son. The son has been having a difficult time ever sine his father successfully became a transsexual. While Impero and the son begin to develop a relationship, Impero begins to wonder if the young man might be his son. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marcelo Mazzarella, Stefania Orsola Garello, (more)
- 2001
The insidious emergence of state-sanctioned anti-Semitism in Fascist Italy sets the stage for this historical drama. In 1938, Umberto (Diego Abatantuono) is a tailor who is beginning to lose business to Leone (Sergio Castellito), a haberdasher whose shop is next door to Umberto's. Leone offers stock much like Umberto's and at lower prices, which has brought plenty of customers into his store, causing Umberto no small amount of annoyance. Umberto's ire is hardly soothed by the fact that his teenage son Paolo (Elio Germano) is dating Leone's daughter, Susanna (Gioia Spaziani), or that the two men's younger sons, Pietruccio (Walter Dragonetti) and Lele (Simone Ascani), are best friends. The rivalry between the two shopkeepers eventually leads to a heated public argument, in which Umberto refers to Leone's Jewish faith in a derogatory manner. A policeman overhears this, and Leone, who had previously been quiet about his Jewish heritage, soon finds himself having to deal with the sanctions being levied against Jewish citizens. As Umberto sees his neighbor slowly stripped of his property, his rights, and his dignity, his anger turns to sympathy and to a wish that he could do something to help a man not so different from himself. Concorrenza Sleale was directed by Ettore Scola, who previously examined Italy during Mussolini's rule in Una Giornata Speciale. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Diego Abatantuono, Sergio Castellitto, (more)
This Italian film was released in 1995 and slowly made its way around the world; its English title is The Star Maker. Like the Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso by the same writer-director, Guiseppe Tornatore, it's drenched in the filmmaker's love for cinema. In Sicily in the early 1950s, Joe Morelli (Sergio Castellitto) is a con man who travels by truck from village to village posing as a film company representative. For a fee, he offers the rubes screen tests, using passages from a script of Gone with the Wind and encouraging their hopes with lines such as "Success awaits you!" Morelli's camera brings out people's hidden sides, including a soldier's war trauma, a woman's protests at being accused of prostitution, and a policeman who recites poetry. Begging for a chance at the stardom Morelli purportedly offers, Beata (Tiziana Lodato) asks Morelli to take her with him. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- 1994
It is 1948, and Dado is a fifteen-year old boy who tries to avoid having to answer his stern schoolteacher's questions too often. He has much more interesting things to do - like trying to get somewhere with the countless girls who interest him. It doesn't matter that he accomplishes nothing, romantically. Life is good. His home is filled to overflowing with relatives, most of them peculiar in some way, and he feels little pressure or distress. This balmy lightly comic story is interspersed with the tale of a woman in the present (early 1990s) who, as a girl, was one of Dado's love-interests. Now things are considerably bleaker for the woman, and her recollections of the past are also screened. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Angiola Baggi
- 1993
The seemingly endless chain of assassinations of judges who seek to end (or at least curtail) the pervasiveness of organized crime and deep corruption in Italian political life, is the topic of this political thriller. As the film opens, Carla (Carla Gravina) is the gynecologist wife of a judge (Jacques Perrin) who is determined to prosecute the country's gang lords with the help of an informant. His life is constantly under threat. Despite the pervasive presence of police bodyguards, the inevitable happens, and he and his informant are killed. Carla, infused with his mission and angry at his death, takes the notes he had hidden and contacts the widow of the informer. With that material, she produces a television documentary featuring the widows of assassinated judges. Of course, this puts her and many others in danger also. Despite this, it begins to appear that she has roused the women of the country to action. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carla Gravina, Jacques Perrin, (more)
- 1990
- PG13
In this sentimental, tragicomic drama, Matteo Scuro (Marcello Mastroianni) is an old widower living in Sicily. His five grown children have scattered all over Italy, and he has heard nothing but glowing reports from them about their lives and careers. One day he takes it into his head to visit these paragons who have fulfilled every one of his ambitions for them. Eventually he discovers that all his children have been lying to him for a very long time because they were afraid to disappoint their papa; their lives are shabby and very much on the edge, and one of them has long-since committed suicide (unbeknownst to him). This daunting truth provokes a heart attack in the old man, who still has a few lies yet to tell and hear, because he insists (as do his children) that "everything is fine." ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Michèle Morgan, (more)
- 1988
- PG
Cinema Paradiso offers a nostalgic look at films and the effect they have on a young boy who grows up in and around the title village movie theater in this Italian comedy drama that is based on the life and times of screenwriter/director Giuseppe Tornatore. The story begins in the present as a Sicilian mother pines for her estranged son, Salvatore, who left many years ago and has since become a prominent Roman film director who has taken the advice of his mentor too literally. He finally returns to his home village to attend the funeral of the town's former film projectionist, Alfredo, and, in so doing, embarks upon a journey into his boyhood just after WWII when he became the man's official son. In the dark confines of the Cinema Paradiso, the boy and the other townsfolk try to escape from the grim realities of post-war Italy. The town censor is also there to insure nothing untoward appears onscreen, invariably demanding that all kissing scenes be edited out. One day, Salvatore saves Alfredo's life after a fire, and then becomes the new projectionist. A few years later, Salvatore falls in love with a beautiful girl who breaks his heart after he is inducted into the military. Thirty years later, Salvatore has come to say goodbye to his life-long friend, who has left him a little gift in a film can. In 2002, over a decade after the film's original release, Tornatore brought the original 170-minute director's cut to American screens for the first time. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Philippe Noiret, Salvatore Cascio, (more)
