FARINELLI: IL CASTRATO
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1995 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2
FARINELLI is about a part of musical history that I knew nothing of until a couple of months ago when the publicity for this movie hit public radio and the trailers started to appear at the local art house cinemas. It seems that in the 18th and 19th centuries there were singers called castrati. These were men who were castrated when they were boys so that they could have increased vocal ranges when they matured. The advertisements say something like they stole his manhood to make him a God.
Farinelli was the stage name for Carlo Broschi (Stefano Dionisi). He and his brother Richardo (Enrico LoVerso) toured all over Europe in the early 1700s. Richardo would compose music designed to show off his brother's amazing vocal range of three and a half octaves. He would also procure women for Farinelli which was trivially easy to do. Farinelli was the rock star of his day. The women fainted when he sang the high notes, and they queued up to be with him. Remember tag team wrestling from the 50s? Well, the brothers actually performed tag team love making. The movie was quite explicit in demonstrating their techniques. The women of the 1700s appeared to be big fans of this sport.
Director Gerard Corbiau's FARINELLI is a troubled, confused, and unhappy fellow. Success gives him little pleasure. Richardo, on the other hand, has a great time. He loves his brother, takes great pleasure in conducting him, and is full of happy smiles. Quite a contrast. As the movie evolves, the script by Andree and Gerard Corbiau shows us that actually both brothers are troubled and tormented. To fill out the cast we have a dejected and broke George Frideric Handel (Jeroen Krabbe).
Although FARINELLI was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, I found the quality of this movie to be all over the map. The good parts are brilliant, but poor ones will put you to sleep. The story is so unique and fascinating, and the technical aspects of the film so well done, that I could not think about missing seeing this show. Sort of a must see, poorly executed picture.
Okay, what is good about it? First, the way they electronically blended a male and a female voice to create a castrato's voice was amazing. Totally believable. Second, the art decoration and the cinematography (Walther Van den Ende) of the baroque opera houses of the period as well as the costumes were unsurpassed. The clothes that Farinelli wore were so imaginative that I wished the costume designer and the set decorator had both won Oscars for their work. The acting by Enrico LoVerso is consistently excellent. That by Stefano Dionisi is uneven except when he sings, and then his expressions steal the scene.
On the poor side is the script and the directing. The movie starts off with plenty of energy, but after an hour, I was spending a lot of time looking at my watch. The show wore out its welcome. They said little new in the last hour, and they said it increasingly slowly. I wish I had left after the first hour. One final negative point, I found Krabbe's performance to be pedestrian and unimaginative.
Although FARINELLI did not have the material to run the 1:50 that it did, I was fond of some of the editing (Joelle Hache) techniques where he would cut from very quiet scenes to loud noisy ones like the hoof beats of large running white horses. The movie is rated R for nudity, sex, drug use, and some realistically bloody scenes. It is basically pretty mild given its subject and would be fine for most teenagers. It is in Italian and French with easy to follow English subtitles. For the brilliance of the good parts and for the not to be missed story, I recommend the movie and give it ** 1/2.
**** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable.
REVIEWED WRITTEN ON: May 1, 1995
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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