‘Sicilian Letters’ Review: Tony Servillo Stars In A Ripping Yarn Of A Mob Movie – Venice Film Festival

There is a disconcertingly ambivalent tone to Sicilian Lettersa very handsomely presented game of cop cats and mafioso mice flying the RAI quality-drama banner. On the one hand, there is the mob movie’s requisite number of murders, betrayals, overnight widows and irredeemably corrupt public officials. There is the expected childhood flashback showing the nastiest honcho in the Cosa Nostra learning his trade by doing something horrible to an animal. All this, and yet Sicilian Lettersdirected by Favio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza,  is more of a romp than a revengers’ tragedy.

In part, this can be shored home to the central presence of the great Tony Servillo, whose resting expression of ironic amusement gives everything around him a touch of levity. Servillo plays Catello Palumbo, who has just emerged from six years behind bars. Given to quoting the classics, Palumbo was, until his incarceration, the headmaster of the school in this unnamed village (“Welcome to the home of temples and olive oil!” says the peeling sign on the road into town). He was also mayor, one of many positions that allowed him to cream off funds from the public purse.

Palumbo was friend and show-runner for Don Gaetano (Rosario Palazzolo), recently deceased, until he was arrested and Gaetano’s business routed. A few of the Gaetano goodfellas remain ready to bump off anyone who tries to rat,  but there is no longer any real money coming in and the rightful next godfather, Matteo (Elio Germano) has gone into hiding, sleeping in a secret chamber behind a bookshelf in the elegant apartment of a former Mob wife (Barbora Bobulova) and entertaining himself with jigsaws.

Palumbo comes home to find his family is now living in pitifully reduced circumstances, all the dirty money spent or gone. His hopes had been pinned on a building project — a luxury hotel, illegally planted in the middle of a conservation zone — which he expected to steer once he was free. Accountants, the courts and environmental protests have ruined his prospects. He faces something close to poverty. Even worse, he faces idleness. What to do?

The police investigators — themselves a motley crew of bullies and plotters, with the exception of the imported straight-shooter inspector, rock-faced Rita Mancuso (Daniela Mara) — have an idea. Using his enduring status as Gaetano’s friend and his son’s godfather, Palumbo will help them find Matteo. He guesses rightly that Matteo must be aching for another kind of life, even if it isn’t the combination of family, church and drug-running he assumes is the goal of any good mafioso.

The stage is set for misunderstandings, dangerous liaisons, and the exchange of a chain of minutely folded letters delivered back and forth by the family’s faithful. For his part, Palumbo initially offers to take a fatherly interest in his now middle-aged godson, written at the behest of the investigators but with Palumbo’s own floridly literary touch. Matteo replies in much the same vein, which raises suspicion among the police until Palumbo explains that prisoners were the last people in Italy who still read books.

There are a great many of these kinds of observations, philosophies and other good words flung out like streamers; this is a film that has drunk of the cup of loquacity and is now in full flow, demanding close attention to the subtitles. There is something old-fashioned in its celebration of the literary — which also, of course, serves to soften any nagging sense that we are actually in the company of truly evil men — reinforced by the sepia interiors with darkened windows, sheep sheds where shepherds watch their flocks by candlelight and the picturesque stone village.

There is also something perversely fanciful about it. We see the remaining clan members meeting in black hoods, a strange decorative ritual where our Palumbo fears he will be rumbled as a rat. Matteo is fixated on a Doric statue his father hid down a well, the significance of which eludes me: it is this film’s Maltese Falcon, perhaps. Meanwhile, the camera seems completely deranged, especially as the directors are starting to set out their story’s stall, lurching from sky to earth or zooming  at the pace of the Starship Enterprise down the length of a barn.

So here it is: mob movie as a ripping yarn. In one of the few moments when we remember that this is a film about organized crime, the out-of-town interloper, Inspector Mancuso, questions whether the local police ever wanted to catch Matteo in the first place. It’s a fair point. Their topsy-turvy economy’s hinterland, the drug trade, is a long way away. Passing through beautiful scenery, with the always amiable companionship of Tony Servillo, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is Sicily as it’s supposed to be: the godfather’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.

Title: Sicilian Letters
Festival: Venice (Competition)
Distributor: Piperfilm
Director: Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza

Screenwriters: Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza
Cast: Toni Servillo, Elio Germano, Daniela Marra, Barbora Bobulova, Giuseppe Tantillo, Fausto Russo Alesi, Antonia Truppo, Tommaso Ragno, Betti Pedrazzi, Filippo Luna, Rosario Palazzolo, Roberto De Francesco, Vincenzo Ferrera, Maurizio Marchetti, Gianluca Zaccaria, Lucio Patanè
Running time: 2 hr 2 mins