Videocracy

He owns over 90 per cent of the country’s commercial TV network, the three largest newspapers, and the most popular football team. He is the country’s wealthiest, most powerful man and the longest serving Prime Minister, a position he has held on three separate occasions. Accusations of corruption, bribery and collusion with national crime syndicates have seen him involved in 2,500 court hearings, each being quashed through laws he instigated.

The country, of course, is Italy, the historic home of the Curia Julia and one of the oldest and supposedly most developed democracies in the world. The man is Silvio Berlusconi, the statesman who congratulated President Obama on his suntan, suggested Mussolini sent Italians ‘on holiday,’ and suggested the 17,000 homeless victims of the L’Aquila earthquake should view the aftermath as a ‘weekend of camping.’ His country is now ranked 77th by the world press freedom index.

But Videocracy, from Italian independent filmmaker Erik Gandini, isn’t a role-call of Silvio’s endless gaffes, scandals and escort girls. An award-winning festival favourite now afforded a mainstream release, Videocracy is instead an elegiac expository of what Gandini has termed Berlusconisma; the ability to hypnotise a whole generation of Italians with an unrelenting, dazzling array of tits and ass.

‘In a videocracy,’ we are told, ‘the key of power is image.’ In the opening scenes, we share Italy’s introduction to the phenomena of Silvio – a live phone-in TV show in the 1970s. The show existed on a simple premise; every time a contestant got a question right, a masked housewife would remove an item clothing. Gandini’s narration intones: “The only complaints came from factories. Workers were staying up late to watch and were too tired to work in the morning.” The show’s success became a template – pacification through hedonism. Give them what they want and they will acquiesce.

With this in mind, Gandini attempts to show us both the consumer and the provider. The film’s first act follows the attempts of a young man to gain celebrity fame through a TV talent show, and who’s act revolves around imitating Ricky Martin. In a shopping mall, young girls bump and grind and pout and parade to Euro-pop, applauded all the way by passing shoppers. They are commonplace, known affectionately as ‘velinas.’

Gandini then turns his gaze on the hall of mirrors that is Italy’s cultural elite. First we meet Lele Mora, close friend of Silvio, spotter of new talent and one of the most influential TV agents in the country. He expresses a passing admiration of Mussolini as he proudly basks in a house decked entirely in white, his vanity as striking as the contempt with which he treats his prey.

Next we meet kingpin paparazzi Fabrizio Corona. “I am a modern Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to himself,” he tells us. Corona takes pictures of celebrities before selling them back so they can retain their reputation, and has served time in jail for extortion. He considers those he exploits to be repugnant creatures but, in his willingness to let Gandini film him nude in the shower, he is clearly in thrall of the cult within which they exist. One of his ambitions, we learn, is to pursue a political career.

Videocracy is stylised and satirical, its humour pockmarked with a pitch-black resignation. Although occasionally ironic, even calculated, Gandini’s narration is tinged with sorrow, the score both mournful and ominous. This is a polemic with suave and sangfroid, an epitaph for a Catholic nation that makes a scantily clad TV starlet the Minister for Gender Equality.

But, as the film ends, it is clear Gandini’s polemic is not confined to the borders of Italy. As our politics becomes presidential, as our national papers attempt to regain some autonomy after posing as party pamphlets during the election, as Simon Cowell continues to pervade our cultural ethos, as the BBC braces itself for 25 per cent cuts and Murdoch prepares to expand his empire, we should view this film not as an excuse for vanity, but as a secular presage.

Tom Seymour

Anticipation:

Trailer banned in Italy but adored at the Venice Film Festival. Controversy trailing in its wake.

Enjoyment:

Unapologetic, acerbic, vogue cinema.

In Retrospect:

Deserves to course through the waters of Italian narcissism.