The Girl By the Lake imageThe Ital­ian Film Fes­ti­val once again sur­veys the best of recent Ital­ian com­mer­cial cin­e­ma. Based at their entire­ly appro­pri­ate new home of the Embassy The­atre, the Fes­ti­val screens 16 dif­fer­ent fea­ture films over the next two weeks and the range means that there will (almost cer­tain­ly) be some­thing for every­one.

High­lights include The Girl By the Lake, a grip­ping psy­cho­log­i­cal who­dunit that won sev­er­al Donatel­lo Awards (the Ital­ian Oscars) in 2008 as well as two prizes at the 2007 Venice Film Fes­ti­val. Set dis­tinc­tive­ly in the north­ern Ital­ian Dolemite region, the film fol­lows the police inves­ti­ga­tion of a young girl’s death. Inscrutable detec­tive Toni Servil­lo dis­cov­ers sev­er­al sus­pects, mean­while his per­son­al own life isn’t going so well.

Toni Servillo in Il DivoServil­lo is a won­der­ful screen actor and he has two films in the Fes­ti­val – he also appears as Giulio Andreot­ti, the elder states­man of the frankly per­plex­ing world of mod­ern Ital­ian pol­i­tics, in Il Divo (The Deity). Three times a Prime Min­is­ter, still a Sen­a­tor at the age of 90, impli­cat­ed in some of Italy’s most scan­dalous intrigues includ­ing assas­si­na­tion and cor­rup­tion, Andreotti’s shad­ow looms large over the cur­rent lead­er­ship — the no-less-bizarre Sil­vio Berlus­coni was a pro­tégé.

The extreme char­ac­ters and the high dra­ma of the sit­u­a­tion lend them­selves to an oper­at­ic treat­ment which direc­tor Pao­lo Sor­renti­no deliv­ers in spades.

Anoth­er film about a major Ital­ian fig­ure who will be most­ly unknown here is Piano Solo, a biopic about the great jazz pianist Luca Flo­res. He was an intense and dri­ven char­ac­ter who worked with some of the late 20th cen­tu­ry greats, but as his star rose his frag­ile men­tal state came under increas­ing pres­sure and 10 years after his death he remains a pow­er­ful cult fig­ure in the Ital­ian music world. As you might expect, there’s a lot of music in the film which is not a bad thing at all.

Matchmakers imageIf the com­par­isons with the genius 3 Men and a Leg from 1997 are accu­rate then Match­mak­ers will be essen­tial view­ing – a lone­ly Sicil­ian decides that the way to fame and for­tune is to bring lovers togeth­er. Crazi­ness ensues.

The fes­ti­val runs for two weeks from Wednes­day.