Hacker Cinema
The Family Friend
L'amico di famiglia
2006 · Film · 102 min
Directed by Paolo Sorrentino
Geremia, an aging tailor/money lender, is a repulsive, mean, stingy man who lives alone in his shabby house with his scornful, bedridden mother. He has a morbid, obsessive relationship with money and he uses it to insinuate himself into other people's affairs, pretending to be the "family friend". One day he is asked by a man to lend him money for the wedding of Rosalba, his daughter. Geremia falls in love at first sight with the bewitching creature and and soon indulges in a "beauty and the beast" relationship...
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Not at all. The creative collapse which caused this decline only happened in the 80ies as everywhere else but lasted until 2000, longer than everywhere else. It happened to kill the major italian studios and producers de Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti. Cinecittà went almost bankrupt 1997. Scorcese almost killing off again Cinecittà with his fatal Gangs of New York epic didn't help, Passion of Christ and the fire in a big Cinecittà hall 2007 neither.
But since 2000 Italian cinema is the most exciting in Europe again. They are the only ones who successfully experiment in new visual aesthetic with the new available camera technology. It's not only Paolo Sorrentini (Camera: Luca Bigazzi) * L'uomo in più (2001) * Le conseguenze dell'amore (2004) * L'amico di famiglia (2006) * Il Divo (2008) and then his famous ones, but also Zapruder Filmmakersgroup (Nadia Ranocchi, David Zamagni, Camera: Monaldo Moretti) with "All Inclusive 3D" (2010), Luca Guadagnino, Salvatore Maira, Michelangelo Frammartino and in the last years many more. Compare it e.g. to the current decline of the french movies.
The directors with which the decline of the Italian cinema started were Gianno Amelio, Guiseppe Tornatore, Roberto Benigni, Gabriele Salvatores, Franco Zeffirelli and Silvio Soldini. They should rest in piece.