Just like last year, my picks for the Italian Film Festival were something light, something bittersweet: a comedy about love, pastries and Catholicism, and a sensitive drama about farewells.
The frothy, silly title initially put me off Holy Cannoli, but I ended up enjoying its unlikely mix. It is written and directed by Pierfrancesco Diliberto, who also stars as Arturo, a real estate agent in Palermo. Arturo is successful at his job, but his true all-consuming passion, true religion you could say, is Sicilian desserts. He devours them daily (with only a slight paunch to show for it), and has a social media account where he reviews cannoli and other traditional sweets.
Then one day, he meets his perfect match, a beautiful pastry chef called Flora. There’s only one problem: Flora is a devout Catholic, Arturo is not. Rather than risk losing her, Arturo pretends to love Catholicism as much as he loves cassata, which leads to some of the film’s funniest scenes. The comical peak has to be the hilarious train wreck where Arturo volunteers to be the Jesus understudy for the re-enactment of the Stations of the Cross, which leads to Life of Brian levels of absurdity.
I assumed that Arturo’s deceptions would take a very familiar romcom route of reveal, estrangement and reconciliation, but this is where Holy Cannoli pivots. Arturo decides to embrace Catholicism for real, with the same passion and obsession with purity that he formerly reserved for desserts. He follows the doctrine and teachings of Jesus to the letter, which results in him alienating everyone in his life. His real estate boss thinks Arturo lost the plot, telling prospective buyers truths about dodgy apartments he’s meant to sell, and even Flora’s patience is running thin. The film has plenty of barbs for both Arturo’s holier-than-thou attitude, and the performative faith of the Catholics who mouth the prayers but don’t put the principles into practice.
Arturo narrates his story from a confession box, talking with the pontiff clearly based on late Pope Francis; this fictionalised version is warm, humorous and genial, and ends up imparting some gentle lessons about faith. In the end, I felt that the movie didn’t quite solve its tensions in a satisfying way, and perhaps bit off more than a light romantic comedy can chew. However, even if its messaging gets a tad heavy-handed in the second half, Diliberto’s gift for comedy and his affection for his characters keep things from souring. And yes, its many mouthwatering close-ups made me crave cannoli and other scrumptious Sicilian pastries.
I tend not to choose films based solely on an actor, but sometimes an onscreen presence catches your eye and simply demands to be seen. In this case, it was a brief glimpse of Alba Rohrwacher during the previews for the festival. I’ve never seen her before, but her magnetic presence and classic features, evoking timeless beauty of Renaissance paintings, made me interested in Three Goodbyes.
Rohrwacher is radiant as Marta, a gym teacher who, at the beginning of the movie, has what feels like a familiar argument with her partner Antonio. However, this particular tiff proves to be the last drop. Marta finds different ways to cope with the break-up, some ordinary, some whimsical, some outright mean. She goes on about her daily life, navigating staff politics at work, eating crackers with ketchup for dinner at home. She has one-sided conversations with a life-size cutout of a Korean pop star that she finds on a street. She leaves anonymous one-star online reviews for the restaurant where Antonio works as a chef.
Marta’s loss of appetite is hardly surprising, but when she decides to investigate it she gets a diagnosis so devastating it takes a while to sink in. From then on, the film becomes more than a break-up drama, about more than just romantic goodbyes. In other hands, it could have turned into a twee weepie, and I did think that Marta’s health crisis was portrayed as way too cosy and clean, without a hint of ugly physical suffering that would be realistic in the circumstances.
Writer-director Isabel Coixet obviously wanted to focus on other things, and her character study does succeed as an intimate, immersive portrait of a woman in search of peace and acceptance when faced with mortality. It explores Marta’s subtle shifts through a series of grounded, organic vignettes, such as her quiet intervention in the self-harming habits of her two female students. There’s something hard-edged and uncompromising about Marta that wards off excessive sentimentality; Rohrwacher’s lived-in and delicate performance is just as great as I’d hoped.
Three Goodbyes is set in Rome, and I loved its deeply personal perspective on the great city I was lucky to visit a few years ago. It truly feels like a love letter from a local rather than a tourist, finding interest and beauty in small details of Marta’s everyday surroundings.
