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The Caiman
- Directed by: Nanni Moretti
- Starring: Silvio Orlando, Margherita Buy, Jasmine Trinca
- Release Date: 6 April
From a country that pioneered political cinema, an attack on the ludicrous Berlusconi was long overdue. This is satire at its sharpest and snappiest.
Moretti's plot premise is a familiar one: Has-been movie producer Bruno Bonomo (Silvio Orlando) has one last chance to save his career or face financial ruin. It doesn't help that he and his wife Paola (Margherita Ray) are separating, his children are out of control and he's sleeping in the office. When a young director gives him the script for her film The Caiman, he's too distracted to read it, but somehow bluffs into financial backing. Belatedly, he realises the film is a thinly veiled attack on Italian Prime Minister and all-powerful media magnate Silvio Berlusconi: someone no one has ever dared to make a film about before. But by then it is too late.
Naturally, the project and the hapless Bonomo are in for a turbulent ride. Forced cast changes mean there are four successive incarnations of Berlusconi. Interestingly, each one moves further and further away from the perma-tanned caricature we recognise from TV, as if the reptile is shedding his layers of skin.
It's agitprop, but agitprop at its most skilled and self-aware. The film points out its own foibles – "It's too easy to make ideological films", says Bonomo – and using the histrionic film industry as a metaphor for Italy’s political culture is ingenious. Especially when the Prime Minister owns three major television channels, and appears regularly on chat shows with scantily-clad hula dancers.
The acting, too, is superb: Silvio Orlando brings depth to the ubiquitous role of the tragi-comic 'little man' – ridiculous enough to laugh at, pathetic and unfortunate enough to feel sorry for. And Italian screen legend Michele Placido is perfect as Marco Pulici: a vain, self-centred, ageing celluloid star.
Perhaps The Caiman is less relevant since Berlusconi was voted out of office last year. But his bite is still sharp: he owns large chunks of the Italian media, and Romani Prodi's centre-left coalition has so far proved a limp biscuit. In short, this may not be the last we have seen of the oily, orange crocodile.
Mary Fitzgerald
