Happy Family

HAPPY FAMILY
2010, Gabriele Salvatores, Italy, 90 min.
With Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Margherita Buy

Gabriele Salvatores, who won an Oscar for MEDITERRANEO and, even more impressively, an EUFF Audience Award for I’M NOT SCARED, returns with a sparkling metafictional comedy. Disappointed in love and career, scriptwriter Ezio (Fabio De Luigi) throws himself (in more ways than one) into a new screenplay involving two disparate families who collide at a fractious dinner party when their teenage children decide to marry.

With a nod to Pirandello, the creator interacts freely with his characters, who criticize his writing, demand bigger parts, and force him to devise a new ending. Ezio even becomes romantically involved with one of his fictional offspring! Filled with witty references to such films as THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, MANHATTAN, THE USUAL SUSPECTS, and THE GRADUATE (including a Simon & Garfunkel score), HAPPY FAMILY is a tribute to both love and the love of movies. In Italian with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen print courtesy of RAI Trade. (MR)

http://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/happy-family