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.
