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Film Fests & Special Screenings Movies & TV

Film Festival Spotlight: Italian Contemporary Film Festival

ITALIAN CONTEMPORARY FILM FESTIVAL from Thursday (June 11) to June 19 at TIFF Bell Lightbox (350 King West). icff.ca. Rating: NNN


Having spent an entire week fawning over Roberto Benigni and Nicoletta Braschi, the Italian Contemporary Film Festival launches the main event: nine days celebrating “the brilliance of Italian contemporary cinema and filmmakers from all over the world.”

The inclusion of Frank D’Angelo’s atrocious No Depo$it – an inept heist thriller in which D’Angelo co-stars with actual performers Michael Madsen, Daniel Baldwin, Peter Coyote and Maria del Mar, among others – seems to challenge that concept, but maybe it’s a calculated risk: after No Depo$it, everything else in the ICFF looks a little bit shinier.

The opening night gala, Marco Turco’s L’Oriana, turns the career of the renowned Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci into a by-the-numbers biopic, but Vittoria Puccini lands its emotional beats with a sharp, no-nonsense performance.

The actors are also the best part of The Colossal Failure Of The Modern Relationship, a romantic comedy set in the Niagara region. Director Sergio Navarretta shoots it like a wine-country infomercial, but stars Krista Bridges, Enrico Colantoni and David Cubitt deliver fun performances.

And then there’s I Can Quit Whenever I Want, a deadpan crime farce about a laid-off professor (Edoardo Leo) who assembles a dream team of ex-academics to manufacture and sell unregulated smart drugs, only to discover that crime is, you know, hard. Those looking for an Italian Breaking Bad will be disappointed, but on its own dopey terms, it’s just fine.

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