The Family Friend (2006)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

L'amico di famiglia / Paolo Sorrentino (2006) A repulsive loan shark, as greedy and unpleasant as one can get, faces the consequences of love. Visually extremely beautiful, with a very cool soundtrack, great performances (Bentivoglio with a Venetian accent???) and a plot that grows minute after minute. I liked this film very much and I was so sad to read the other reviews on IMDb because it's obvious nobody understood it. You can say Sorrentino is Brothers Coen with a heart, to make it very simple: but to read people who still unearth poor old Fellini every time they watch an Italian film it's gut wrenching. Filmed in real location (Latina, Sabaudia and the so-called Agro Pontino were mostly built during Mussolini's dictatorship with the peculiar "fascist" style that make them so unpleasant and cinematic at the same time) and with mostly unknown actors Sorrentino takes his risk in the last part of the movie and doesn't really make it right, but it's a minor flaw that only the "Murder she wrote" fans can be disappointed by. There are some things in common with former Sorrentino's film "Le conseguenze dell'amore": a man who gave up his life (and his dignity) for the sake of money has to come to terms with the unwanted feelings of love (not simply love for a woman but love for a different life, a friend, beauty, freedom, himself). I recommend this film strongly as long as you're an open-minded person and you can get a good translation, if you're not Italian.

An impressive and stylish film. Rizzo as Geremia the main character is marvellous. He dominates every scene. His simian style shuffle from side to side, his carrier bag swinging gently from side to side hanging from his bad arm. It is through his eyes we see the world and so the criticism of the female flesh on display seems a bit naieve. It's a stylish film shot through with Sorrentino's flamboyant flourishes of camera movement and against the grain cutting, almost too abrupt sometimes. I enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed the Consequences of Love and I recommend both of them. There are moments of revelatory dialogue on the nature of existence which doesn't offend or get tied up in long soliliquay's and quite odd scenes offering a glimpse of darkness in this man's tarnished, cynical world where everything, even a kitsch figurine, has a price. It's an icy film and I did come away from it not really sure what I had learned about the characters or what it was trying to say. I was a little disappointed with the end but that said it's offbeat in so many ways I forgive it it's flaws.

In a word, weird form the outset. From the opening creepy noises and extreme visual stimulation to the random cuts and bizarre set pieces 'The Family Friend' is nothing if not captivating. Its directed superbly by Paolo Sorrentino, whose last film the 'The Consequences of Love' should give you some idea of his visual style and flair, add to this the great cinematography, brilliant use of music and the twisted central performance of Giacomo Rizzo as Geremia and you have a truly excellent if not a little disturbing movie which is part Lynch, Part Fellini and all original. Geremia is a seventy year old tailor which is actually a cover for the fact he is a loan shark. Lonely and sleazy he prays on the needy and during the loan deals poses as a family friend to surround himself with people. One such family borrows money for their daughters wedding and Geremia becomes self appointed helper and starts arranging things for the young couple. Eventually he falls for the bride to be, a winner of the local beauty pageant, and the film becomes a kind of beauty and the beast tale. She is the gorgeous young girl overly fond of dancing and he amongst other things is a seedy, beastly rapist. The films characters are pretty much all unredeemable and it comes across like an Italian 'League of Gentlemen' with its dark humour and strange set ups. The music adds to the weirdness by ranging from Anthony and the Johnsons to classical and country and western. Just like 'Hidden' from last year the film leaves loads of unanswered questions and loose ends but that adds to its deconstructed nature and doesn't detract in anyway from the main story. Its in the smaller things that this film shines like when everyone takes their own chairs to the beauty contest as 'the sponsor and provider of seats pulled out at the last minute' or how Geremia's carrier bag swings from side to side over his plastered arm as he waddles along in schoolboy short trousers. This film won't be to everyone's liking, it is almost certainly an acquired taste, but those that can get under its skin won't be disappointed and will love it for all its creepy eccentricities

Paulo Sorrentino, with The Consequences of Love, proved himself to be an elegant explorer of twisted obsession.This follow-up is set in what was once the Pontine Marshes, near Rome. The protagonist Geremia di Geremei (Rizzo), an ageing tailor and loanshark, employs a couple of heavies, one of whom supplies the history in seconds: while putting pressure on a couple of borrowers, he suddenly turns and slaps the wall behind him. "A mosquito! All this was swamps before Il Duce!" - then smiles broadly at the suitably startled face of the 'customer'.Geremia, who would come over as nothing but scruffy but for his affectation of wearing his jackets and coats over his shoulders like a grand impresario; but who spends the whole film with one arm in a cast, hinting at some previous shenanigans, scuttles (there's no other word for it) between his 9 to 5 ragtrade shop which is obviously more than a mere money-laundering front, and the smelly little flat which he shares with his bedridden mother, who spends all her days glued to the TV. Not your typical hood.In his sweatshop he accepts entreaties from desperate low credit citizens - much of his business is for weddings. He puts on a mock-uncle affection for the potential brides, and they try not to gag as he oozes all over them. (It later becomes apparent that he is actually carrying on the family business.) He and his customers have a tacit face-saver, in referring to him as a 'friend of the family'. When he and his 'boys' visit one late-paying couple, the jewellery and kitchen appliance they take are not quite enough, and he returns for further tribute from the wife in the form of a perverse sexual / financial / sentimental action, a deeply symbolic scene that seems to hint at a lot about his character. Some friend.Another scene where disparate elements make their own logic is where the beautiful Rosalba (Chiatti) wins a beauty contest and goes into her winning dance routine, hot and writhing but against limpid and cool synth music. Her subsequent wedding becomes the first of Geremia's shake-ups: her father, although disgusted with himself, unable to handle the payments necessary to cover the costs of the celebration, engineers an opportunity for the tailor to be alone with the bride, ostensibly to repair a broken shoulder-strap on her wedding-gown.The next big move is when Geremia, against the advice of his mother, takes on the loan of a lifetime; the lure of big business and the barely credible relationship between this latter-day Gollum with the feisty Rosalba explode the top end of his life, putting an end to his extended childhood.Practically everything that happens in this film has the apparent weight of symbolism, and doubtless some parts are, in fact, symbolic. Although its morbid purulence may leave you feeling a need to head for the wash-basin, it's fascinating throughout for its constant digging below the surface of life to examine the linkage. And perhaps as a study of the survival of the fittest. CLIFF HANLEY