Thought, feeling, and a healthy dose of melodramatic passion are almost always prevalent in Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio’s films, and his native country provides him with copious material to expose his directorial acumen. Italy’s recent contentious debate over euthanasia provides the framework for Bellocchio’s multi-layered exploration of life, love and politics in Dormant Beauty (Bella addormentata), which was featured in MIFF 2013’s Cinema 360° presented by Viendomovies program, and will be opening for a commercial theatrical run next week.
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Eluana Englaro
Dormant Beauty draws upon the case of Eluana Englaro (1970-2009), an Italian woman who had been in a coma for 17 years, following a car crash in 1992, and suffered what doctors determined to be irreversible brain damage. Her father’s decision to remove her feeding tube and allow her to die was supported by the Italian courts and opposed by the Vatican and Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister at the time. Ms. Englaro’s fate, like Terri Schiavo’s in the US a few years earlier, became the subject of a furious and divisive national debate.
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Isabelle Huppert in Dormant Beauty
With a superb cast led by Toni Servillo, Isabelle Huppert and Alba Rohrwacher, Bellocchio uses the climactic days of the right-to-die controversy—as protesters gather outside a hospital in Udine, and Parliament assembles to vote on emergency legislation—and examines its impact on three sets of characters whose struggles mirror the larger drama that is playing out on ubiquitous television screens. A larger picture of contemporary Italian society emerges, to intense effect. Catch the Miami Premiere engagement of Dormant Beauty at Miami Beach Cinematheque and Cosford Cinema on Friday, July 18th. —Tatyana Chiocchetti
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