Torino Film Festival 2024
I missed the opening weekend of the Torino Film Festival this year, but I can’t complain too much since I was in Lyon, France, having fun with friends who are visiting from Australia. Then, due to some scheduling changes at work, I only managed to make it to one screening, but one is obviously better than none.
A lot of celebrities are here in town, and the opening ceremony looks like it was fun. We had our own kind of Beverly Hills, with Ron Howard’s new film, Eden, making its international premiere as part of the ceremony. Also in town was Rosario Dawson. The Italian press had a field day hearing that she has relatives in nearby Asti and that she loves vitello tonnato, a Piedmontese specialty (it sounds odd but is delicious, if you like tuna and anchovies).
With 120 films showing this year, including 23 world premieres, there is much on offer. Aside from Ron Howard and Rosario Dawson, other stars here were Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, Angelina Jolie, and Sharon Stone, who looked absolutely stunning in Tony Warda. Ornella Muti, Julia Ormond, and Giancarlo Giannini made up part of the European contingent. If you want to try to catch a glimpse of someone famous during the Festival, head to the Teatro Regio, where the major events take place, or wait outside the Principi di Piemonte hotel in the center of town. That seems to be the go-to place for celebrities when they come to Torino.
Riff Raff
Last year my selections skewed towards documentaries and realism, while two years ago I was (and still am) enamored by Albert Serra’s Pacifiction. This year I opted for Riff Raff, Dito Montiel’s (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints) star-studded project, billed as a black comedy crime film. The movie premiered two months ago in Toronto, and here in Torino it was not part of the competition (fuori concorso).
Ed Harris plays Vincent, who we eventually discover had a prior life as a gangster. Vince has moved on with Sandy (Gabrielle Union) and their son, DJ (Miles J. Harvey). Trouble lands on their doorstep in the form of Vince’s elder son, Rocco (Lewis Pullman); Marina (Emanuela Postacchini), Rocco’s girlfriend; and Ruth (Jennifer Coolidge), Vince’s first wife and Rocco’s mom. Leftie (Bill Murray) and Lonnie (Pete Davidson) round out the ensemble as two current criminals, who we…eventually…find out are in pursuit of Rocco.
Written by actor and screenwriter John Pollono (Small Engine Repair), the idyllic setting of Yarmouth, Maine, is a calming backdrop for the raunchiness (I’m looking at you, Ruth) and dysfunctionality of everyone who turns up on New Year’s Eve. Again, we…eventually…find out that everyone has a bone to pick with everyone else, except for possibly Vince, whose past actions in any case come back to haunt him.
The War of the Roses and Very Bad Things
As you have probably guessed, I found the film a little bit too slow-paced given the material. As an example, we only find out why Rocco, Marina, and Ruth are even in Yarmouth a good two-thirds of the way into the film. I can’t fault the cast, or even really the story. Aside from pacing, maybe it’s more a problem of how I felt by the end, which was somewhat yuck. The laughs were few and far between and I didn’t care for the level of violence, even though it wasn’t unexpected. As I was walking home from the theater, I realized that Riff Raff reminds me of The War of the Roses, with less humor, and Very Bad Things, with less satire. It’s a pity, because with a cast like this, I really wanted to like it more.
Standouts in terms of the story were DJ, who you just feel really bad for by the end of the movie. He’s a good kid but, you know, you can’t choose your family, and he and his newborn nephew are in for a future that probably no amount of therapy will be able to unravel. In terms of actors, I was really happy to see Lewis Pullman, who I like a lot in Outer Range.
Festival Passes
A word of advice: you can save money by buying one of the festival passes, which gives you access to five films, but you have to choose the exact screening you want to see at the time you buy the pass, and you can’t make changes later. Same for individual tickets. The screenings take place in the center of Torino but you do have to factor in time getting from one venue to another if you don’t do the screenings in the same cinema.
This year I’m really pleased with the official festival program. It’s a booklet this time, and makes a really nice souvenir. It seems like a small thing, but I think they did a great job on it.
The Sentinel – Recent Read
I love the cheesy Seventies TV movie vibes of Jeffrey Konvitz’s The Sentinel, a recent read. A bestseller in the Seventies, the book follows Allison, a model in New York City. Recently returned to the city after her father’s death, she rents a brownstone just west of Central Park, where she is confronted by a cast of strange tenants and assailed by debilitating headaches and other maladies. She drinks rosé while eating TV dinners. The author never met an exclamation point he didn’t like! Both the book and the movie earned Konvitz huge advances which would be unheard of today. Melodramatic with certain aspects that might not have aged well, depending on your point of view (personally, I thought Allison’s overwrought fear of “the lesbians” was hysterical), the story nevertheless kept me reading and is a good book if you want a supernatural story that doesn’t require much effort, something to act as a palate cleanser in between more strenuous reads.
Do you like books from this “Satanic panic” era of the Seventies? Have you read The Sentinel, or maybe The Exorcist? And what about Riff Raff or the other films I mentioned? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
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