Reality (M). Director: Matteo Garrone. Starring: Aniello Arena, Loredana Simioli, Raffaele Ferrante. 111 minutes.
This funny and disturbing Italian drama opens with a long aerial shot, of a resplendent horse-drawn carriage travelling incongruously along a city street. It zooms in, to follow the carriage onto the grounds of an exquisite estate and into the midst of an elaborate wedding. It considers the revellers en masse before eventually singling one out for special attention. This magnificent bravura sequence evokes from the outset the sense of a divine gaze picking out an individual life from the sprawl of reaility, and for a while watching it in intimate detail.
It underlines the film's central existential and ethical theme, regarding how we behave differently when we are being watched, and how the identity of the watcher affects the motivations of the watched. In this instance, the one who the divine gaze picks out is preoccupied by other gazes. Luciano, a garrulous Neapolitan fishmonger, enjoys being the centre of attention. He appears at this family wedding dressed in drag, a kind of irreverent performance art for which he is apparently renowned and beloved by his extended family.
This reputation for playful exhibitionism later prompts his family to encourage him to audition for the Italian Big Brother. Initially reluctant to do so, Luciano becomes gradually obsessed with the temptation of wealth and fame. After he passes two rounds of auditions, his obsession is fuelled by his certainty that the producers want him for their program. Instead of waning into disappointment, this conviction grows even as the date for the series launch comes and goes. His obsession causes him to neglect his wife (Simioli) and their children.
Luciano is a religious pilgrim on the wrong path. He doesn't want to know God; he wants to be God. His aspiration is epitomised by super-celebrity former Big Brother contestant Enzo (Ferrante), who appears irregularly in Luciano's life, always surrounded by slavering admirers. In one scene Enzo appears to fly from the rafters of a nightclub amid coloured, flashing lights and blaring music, as his worshippers (Luciano among them) chant and swoon below, conflating celebrity with divinity.
Of course, you can see the ropes that suspend Enzo from the ceiling. His divinity is artifice, a combination of marketing and special effects. Earlier in the film, he had appeared at the aforementioned wedding, and performed a well-received benediction. Moments later, he was glimpsed at another wedding uttering the same 'heartfelt' words. The celebrity Enzo