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MY MOTHER'S SMILE
Directed & Written by: Marco Bellocchio.
Produced by: Marco Bellocchio & Sergio Pelone.
Director of Photography: Pasquale Mari.
Edited by: Francesca Calvelli.
Music by: Riccardo Giagni.
Released by: New Yorker.
Language: Italian with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Italy. 102 min. Not Rated.
With: Sergio Castellitto, Jacqueline Lusting, Chiara Conti, Gigio Alberti, Alberto Mondini, Gianfelice Imparato, Piera Degli Esposti & Toni Bertorelli.
DVD Features: Interviews with Marco Bellocchio & Sergio Castellitto. Conversation between Bellocchio & Castellitto. "A Day on the Set" featurette. Trailer.

On the heels of this week’s The Da Vinci Code comes this 2002 iconoclastic Italian satire, originally released one year before Dan Brown’s blockbuster novel, and now out on DVD in the US. Coincidentally, a Mona Lisa-like smile makes its appearance here too, an image seen throughout the film – the mocking and enigmatic smirk of painter Ernesto Picciafuoco's mother, who was murdered by her mentally-unstable son Egidio. Ernesto is shocked when a Vatican envoy informs him that his mother is well on her way towards becoming a saint. When pressed by a cardinal why he’s opposed to his mother’s canonization, Ernesto replies matter-of-factly he hates her – she was an idiot.

Director Marco Bellocchio famously took on the Catholic Church and the Italian family in his frenetic first film, Fist in His Pocket, an apropos title for a film about an angry young man. Now 40 years later, Bellocchio’s attack on the same institutions is calmer and more temperate. In My Mother’s Smile, Ernesto’s aristocratic family, which has fallen from power, has been conspiring behind his back for three years to make his mother a saint. What the family needs, according to one aunt, is a protector, a father figure like Opus Dei (another Code coincidence). The deliberate mood is set by the pensive performance of Sergio Castellitto, whose Ernesto ironically shares the same mocking smile as his mother, which he can’t repress even if he tried. This leads to many confrontations, including one with an Old World count who challenges Ernesto to resolve their differences the 18th century way – in a duel.

But the film is less about the behind-the-scenes ecclesiastical machinations and more on the film’s central relationship between Ernesto and his young son Leonardo, which rounds off any of the film’s rough edges without dulling them. Recently separated from his wife, Ernesto returns to her apartment every night to tuck the boy into bed. His atheistic stand only hardens as his wife thinks it might be useful for Leonardo to have a saint as a grandmother. Interspersed with the elegant dialogue and the gentle scenes between father and son are occasional blunt jabs, like a surreal photo shoot of his mother’s murder with the prerequisite Catholic iconography; the model, as his martyred mother, has fake blood smeared on her wardrobe, her face lifted towards heaven, arms wide open in prayer.

One of the most versatile of European stars, the subtle Castellitto is accurately described in the 15-minute “Conversation” featurette as a non-acting actor. The director rightly praises the actor’s performance in what is the most informative of the extras, as both Bellocchio and Castellitto dissect certain acting moments in the film. Ironically, Castellitto portrayed a recently canonized saint, Padre Pio, in an Italian TV-miniseries in 2000. For another take on Castellitto, look for his chilling portrayal of machismo run rampant in the June DVD release of Don’t Move opposite Penélope Cruz (Genius Entertainment). Kent Turner
May 18, 2006