THE BEST MAN
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. October Films Director: Pupi Avati Writer: Pupi Avati Cast: Diego Abantantuono, Ines Sastre, Dario Cantarelli, Cinia Mascoli, Valeria D'Obici, Toni Santagata, Nini Salerno, Mario Erpichini, Ugo Conti
One of cinema's eminent romantic scenes occurs in Mike Nichols's 1967 film "The Graduate," when Dustin Hoffman snatches Katharine Ross from the chapel in which she is to be married to the wrong man. The French under Jean-Charles Tacchella aimed for something similar when two cousins, Marie-Christine Barrault and Victor Lanoux, already married to others, decide to go beyond the usual cousin-like kissing. Truffaut's "The Story of Adele H" posits a young woman obsessed with a soldier who does not return her love. When the man of her dreams marries someone other than she, the title character dons wedding attire and simulates a marriage ceremony with him. And now the Italians come into the game with "The Best Man," Pupi Avati's tender tale of a stranger who is called on to rescue a bride from marriage to the inappropriate male.
Directed by Avati with all the sumptuous splendor of a Merchant-Ivory production, "The Best Man" is an altogether satisfying tale about class and caste in Italy during the final days of the 19th century. More important, it flirts with the motif "Does love exist and, if so, is there such a thing as love at first sight?" The birth of the 20th century is a time in which people around the world wonder whether humankind will reach the moon and whether the century will study war no more. Pupi Avati, however, is more concerned with love which, he holds, actually received its birth as the year 1900 is ushered in.
What does Avati mean when he suggests that love was born only yesterday? Simply this: in Europe, the common belief--at least among those disappointed in marriage--was that love does no exist. The landed gentry continued to arrange their children's marriages, and nuptials were essentially business propositions, merging the assets of the families concerned. So when the final hour approaches for the marriage of the beautiful twenty-two year old Francesca Babini (Ines Sastre) with the bald, aquiline, and much older Edgardo Osti (Dario Cantarelli), she panicks like a character in Neil Simon's "Plaza Suite" and rushes from the altar at the very moment she is expected to say "I do." When a handsome and mysterious person who has been appointed best man, Angelo Beliossi (Diego Abantantuono), appears at the ceremony, Francesa takes one look and falls instantly in love, belying all the advice her mother had given her about the nonexistence of that pleasant ache. Pressured by her family to marry the rich Edgardo, yet prompted by her passion for Angelo, she takes her vows to Edgardo while looking at Angelo, thereby considering herself wedded to the best man.
This lush fin-de-siecle drama, a meditation on love which sets aside ample time for humor, highlights Francesa as the new, modern, 20th century woman. She has her own mind, believes in the most romantic notions of the storybooks, and is willing to risk her family's enmity and the ostracism of the community for self-fulfillment. Her family despite an outward display of wealth, are actually deeply in debt and dependent on Edgardo to bail them out. A refusal by Francesca to marry as father planned could drive him out of business and force her brother to lose his place at the university. Even her eccentric aunt, it is rumored, might hang herself if the marriage did not take place. It's no wonder that during the three-day ceremony gossip spread like a horde of hungry people around a table of antipasto that Francesca is unwilling to marry because a) she is not a virgin, b) she is pregnant, c) her new husband is "light in his loafers." For his part Angelo, despite his reputed millions, did not earn the money by his own hard work in America as the adoring guests believe but is actually an untalented person who inherited his affluence and, to top it off, has been too shy to make a dent on the women in his life. Writer-director Avati, then, plays with one of the most popular of all literary themes, the gap between illusion and truth.
But the movie is in no way mired in the literary. Photographer Pasquale Rachini hones in on the lavish gifts which have been proferred to the bride and groom, each present ostentatiously announced by its description and its donors. He evokes humor from his display of some of the cultural norms of the day, norms which appear quaint to us today just a century later. When the bed is to be prepared for the bride and groom to take their obligatory nap between the wedding and the lavish reception, it must be readied by virgins, and since few women could claim the status, the job would fall to the young man who is the brother of the bride.
Diego Cantarelli, in the role of a womanizer who is experienced in business and wishes his best man to invest in a land scheme, turns in a dramatic portrayal of a man who represents the old order; one which is soon to be toppled by a growing democratic and feminist movement. Francesca Babini, a Spanish actress whose beauty can be compared to that of Catherine Zeta-Jones ("The Mask of Zorro"), is believable as a representive of emerging feminism, while the melancholy and awkward title role is performed subtlety and discrimination by Diego Abantantuono.
"The Best Man," called in Italian, "Il Testimone Dello Sposo," was Italy's submission to the Academy for Oscar consideration and received a Golden Globe nomination as best picture. Almost profligate in its splendor, the picture serves as a deeply resonant analysis of class, love, and illusion in a world which was soon to be radically changed by its first Great War.
Not Rated. Running time: 100 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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