Ballo a tre passi

I'm a nut about Italian films, and Italy in general. I love Sardinia and Sardinians. It's a beautiful island with energetic and beautiful people that are anything but Italian. But... this film is nonsensical. Like a pure experiment on weirdness. Someone already pointed out a very distasteful scene that makes anyone cringe (the idea of man as a pure male beast that only knows sex from beasts). The four stories (should be three, but, oddly, there are four) are disconnected and they don't pull together in the final act (as the Director seems to think).

I wouldn't say anything about the pace. It's just simply that there's no point in this film, no argument, except the possible reference to life, death and the after-world... And this is the first film I remember that four different photographers are involved in... something that shows pretty well... not favourably.

I saw Ballo this month at Cinema Italian Style in L.A., and thought it was the best movie of the whole festival. Quiet, but not the least bit static--every image and sound contributes to earnest drama. The visuals are amazing, and the locale exotic, but nothing happens for the sake of mere prettiness or exoticism. My favorite of the 4 stories was the third, where the youngish nun travels back to her town for a cousin's wedding. Granted, there's no melodrama, but by the time it's over you feel like you know everything about her and all the people around her. It manages to be respectful, critical, sweet and astute all at the same time. The music--Sardinian traditional plus the Village People in a great disco scene!--is especially effective. I only hope it will get distributed widely so more people will get the chance to see it. Go see it if you get a chance!

Ballo a tre passi tells four stories from the empty, rural Italian island Sardegna. The film reminded me very much of Kaos, by the Taviani brothers. The pictures are delightful to the eye and this debut is made with very much love for this Italian island. Although a slow pace is sometimes necessary to tell a beautiful story, at some point the film is not intense enough to compensate for being this slow.

I was so embarrassed watching this film - I couldn't even manage to stay until the end. I was looking forward to a nice surprise: films made in and about Sardinia do not come out every day. Sadly my expectations withered slowly away since the very beginning. This movie has no pace, no acting, no plot, no breathtaking scenery, no likable character, not even the urchins in the first episode. It simply appeals to your "gut" feeling. Everybody - kids included - is appallingly repulsive, performs incoherent deeds, appears to be some subhuman being in desperate need of a shower. I could catch no underlying humour, probably my fault.

The first scene shows some dire, deserted interior, with piles of rotting material scattered everywhere, the most attractive fixture being an overweight sewer rat gorging itself on some unidentified revolting substance. In the second episode we are treated to a candid camera-like take of a cross/eyed shepherd milking the flock and making cheese while feeding his pig. If this is supposed to look realistic, the Sardinian cheese industry is going to lose a good portion of its revenues. We follow the sheperd's trip from his "idyllic" hideout in the mountains to a "trendy" eatery on the coast, whose cheesy owner performs a series of senseless actions and feeds his customers the aforesaid cheese, and so on and so forth. I really could not take much more of that.

I left the cinema feeling queasy, wondering if my indigestion had been caused by what I had viewed.

1 out of 4.