Padre Pio (2023)

Direction: Abel Ferrara
Country: Italy / Germany

Padre Pio, a German-Italian production directed by the peculiar Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant, 1992; The Funeral, 1996; Tommaso, 2019), is a joyless, graceless faith-related drama that straddles between esoteric turmoil and political activism. Over the course of this biopic, the focus scatters into many directions, the handheld camera makes you dizzy, and the excitement is limited. 

Despite obstacles, the darkness of the era (the story is set at the end of World War I) is well portrayed and Shia LaBeouf ’s performance is positive. The most striking parts of the movie are those in which Pio, who had arrived at a Capuchin monastery in the poor city of San Giovanni Rotondo, opens up with his God. Suffering tremendously with what he sees (greed and slavery are devouring the town) and with what he hears (some confessions are nauseatingly perverse), he is often attacked by the devil himself. Still, he refuses to abandon hope.

The fearless Ferrara tries to tackle this fascinating character but loses traction in a film that, asking the right questions, never finds dramatically persuasive answers. There’s not enough zest to the storytelling, which rather moves bluntly between demonic horror and somber spectacle. Choppy, unpolished and undeveloped, Padre Pio will certainly divide audiences.

Siberia (2020)

Direction: Abel Ferrara
Country: Italy / Germany / other

Populated by recollections, disturbing dreams, inner fears, symbology, conjuration and eroticism, Siberia, the second film of Abel Ferrara starring Willem Dafoe in 2020, fascinates with some scattered opaque scenes but ultimately disappoints. 

Dafoe is Clint, a man looking for his lost soul in a remote Siberian place where he used to go fishing with his late father. The film is brusquely edited, displaying a few bizarre scenes that are intertwined with ghostly appearances and inexplicable interactions, suggesting relationships that the movie only hints at. With the backdrop continually changing from the snowy desolation to the desert to the woods, the film throws in a great number of elements without revealing things clearly. It hides instead, merging visual bafflement and philosophical inquiry. Hence, it wouldn't really surprise me if some viewers found the results tactless, since Ferrara loses momentum in tacking countless details that become inconsequent and abominably tireless with the time.

Unlike the engrossing Tommaso, Ferrara’s previous work, Siberia is a dysfunctional film whose sweeping ambition falls short of consistent narrative moments and, according to that, is forced to deal with its monumental incapacity to create a cohesive whole. An artistic sabotage, I dare to say.

Tommaso (2020)

Direction: Abel Ferrara
Country: Italy / USA / other

In Tommaso, cult director Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant; King of New York; Pasolini) puts forward a confessional semi-autobiographical work where his real wife and daughter - Cristina Chiriac and Anna Ferrara, respectively - star alongside his first-choice actor, Willem Dafoe (their fifth collaboration). The latter gives a powerful central performance as the title character, an American filmmaker living in Rome.

As a recovered alcoholic and drug addict, Tommaso doesn’t miss a rehab session, also spending time giving acting classes and practicing yoga, whose breathing techniques pacify his busy mind. However, he’s going through a tough phase with his autonomous wife Nikki (Chiriac). The communication between them is lacking and Tommaso is gradually pushed into a vortex of madness and anger.

With surrealistic injections that take the form of erotic, sinister or fatalistic episodes in accordance with the main character’s state of mind, this gritty drama also mixes the earthly and the esoteric, revealing a philosophical ambiguity that keeps us seeking for answers and unbroken lines to follow. Ferrara shots with substance and quirkiness and provides a very human experience.

Husband and wife have their secrets, but love can’t be bought. Reality or illusion, we sense a tragedy coming across with very cinematic sensibility. That’s the nature of Ferrara’s world; a world where pleasure and pain can’t stay apart from each other.

All things considered, this is all about feelings, and both Dafoe and Ferrara denote enough inspiration to prevent this idiosyncratic statement to sink into oblivion.