The Caiman film review

certificate_12A

THE CAIMAN

Best known for films that concentrate on aspects of his own personality (Dear Diary, The Son's Room), Italian director Nanni Moretti has made his most overtly political film to date with The Caiman. There's little thinly disguised in this bruising attack on the life and times of ex-Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, and it forms part of Moretti's wider attack on the country's leader, having already organised public demonstrations against his regime.

In a film that mixes the art of film-making and a political message, Silvio Orlando stars as Bruno, a beleaguered director whose heyday of genre films is well behind him. Out of date in style and out of money in terms of making films, Bruno is at a crisis point, with a wife (and former leading lady) that wants out of their marriage.

Salvation of sorts appears in the form of a young screenwriter named Teresa (Jasmine Trinca), whose script - The Caiman, meaning the Crocodile, a pun on one of Berlucsoni's many Italian nicknames - grabs his attention. Allegations of corruption abound, as Teresa's film looks at the rise of one of Europe's most controversial leaders.

Bruno decides to try and salvage his career and his marriage with one final roll of the directorial dice, and Moretti criss-crosses between his domestic life and imagined scenes from the finished film itself, with Berlusconi played by a variety of actors (including Moretti himself). The vagaries and unpredictability of the film business are underlined by the amount of people that come on board the project only to leave it when something better turns up.

Slyly amusing and often fascinating, Moretti's refreshing film should have great appeal to lovers of quality European arthouse cinema, and begs the question of when - or if ever - we are likely to see a similar treatment of our our PM.

Paul Hurley