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.