The Caiman review

In his 1998 film Aprile, Italy’s foremost cine-diarist Nanni Moretti weighed the importance of civic duty against unhindered artistic whimsy. Namely, should a director in a position of notoriety use his skills to make a sober, timeless documentary on the sour state of politics in Italy or follow an innate ambition to make a ’50s-style musical about a Trotskyite pastry chef?

With The Caiman, Moretti has his pastry and eats it by successfully combining deep-set political grievances with conventional family high jinx. The story centres on neurotic B-pic producer Bruno Bonomo (Moretti’s alter-ego of choice, Silvio Orlando) who unintentionally accepts a script from single mother Teresa (Jasmine Trinca) that turns out to be a scathing critique of ex-mogul-in-chief, Silvio Berlusconi.

Declined funding by state broadcaster RAI, Bruno spends the film filching money from various sources while trying to determine whether his schlock roots would tarnish such a noble enterprise, all the while becoming increasingly estranged from his wife and children.

While the doomed production swerves in and out of the red, proceedings are tastefully dappled with archive snippets of Berlusconi making an ass out of himself at the European Parliament, but the difficulties of making a film critical of a ruling party are writ large.

Parallels are drawn between the break-down of the family unit and the country’s moral decline under their oafish leader, but just like the spineless lefties upon whom Moretti places his faith, The Caiman fails to inject urgency into the issues at hand.

Precious little of his radical political agenda manages to hit the target, with the only really rousing moment in the film arriving when Moretti himself (playing an actor) assumes the role of his nemesis, portraying him with a mixture of debonair charm and diabolical malice.

While the film’s political intentions are clear, as drama it doesn’t fare well. There’s an uneasy relationship between the film and the film-within-a-film, and the plotting too often wavers between the intricate and garbled. There is also very little of the director’s irreverent bonhomie, which may disappoint long-time fans hoping for the odd comedic aside.

Still, this is an undeniably sophisticated piece of work which, in its own small way, may even have contributed to ousting Berlusconi from office. Maybe next time, a little less Trotsky and a little more pastry will do the trick.