Sic transit gloria mundi, the once illustrious Italian cinema has stalled in the doldrums for decades, Fratelli D’Innocenzo (brothers Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo) is the latest new blood might give the status quo a boost. BAD TALES, their sophomore feature, was awarded a Silver Bear for Best Screenplay in Berlin. It is a quietly disconcerting portrayal of the slow demise of Italian suburbia.

Set in the outskirt of Rome, not the sink area in Matteo Garrone’s DOGMAN (2018), the locality of BAD TALES is more petit bourgeois, similar to a tract housing project, denizens have a nice terraced house with a garden, plus an inflated swimming pool if they can afford one. But neither personal contentment nor domestic bliss can be traced from adults and their children alike.

The film unfolds as a man’s husky voiceover (Tortora) narrates the content of a young girl’s discarded diary which he chances upon, it takes some time to identify the girl as Alessia Placido (Rebeggiani), she and her brother Dennis (Di Cola) are straight-A students, but their father Bruno (Germano) is a lackadaisical, fickle reprobate, who is jobless and emotionally unfit, his mood swing becomes a terror to both Dennis and Alessia, their mother Dalila (Chichiarelli) is the bread maker but also cowed by Bruno’s hissy fit.

Essentially BAD TALES is an ensemble piece, there are other families with similar issues, the dissociation and incommunicability between kids and their parents. Viola Rosa (Melillo) is a victim of her vulgar, hypocritical, emotionally aloof father Pietro (Malatesta), who covertly despises the Placidos (because is belittled since he is unable to keep up the Joneses, school grade is a parent’s top-line asset to own one-upmanship), but thick as thieves with Bruno when they exchange their lecherous talk to a woman of their base desire; Ada (Borgioli) is a sexually curious tween who reads dirty messages in her father’s cellphone and wants to experiment the birds and the bees with Dennis. But the latter is bewitched by a much older, corn-fed, potty-mouthed girl Vilma (D’Ambra), who has a bun in the oven (and milk on tap, a tad barnyard though), but her life seems as aimless as those around her.

If adults are shrouded by malaise and crippled by their own petty failings, D’Innocenzo brothers devise something more wicked in the school kids’ surreptitious rebellion, and what is so horrifying is not the action itself, but the gaping negligence, how those parents can let the danger fall through the cracks when it is right in front of their eyes every day. When BAD TALES finally unleashes its sinister tragedy (Lino Musella leaves an ambiguous mark in a limited role as the kids’ abetting professor who holds a grudge against the community alter being hard done by), it doesn’t pounce upon you like a shock, the disturbing discovery is arranged as a well-measured reactive long take of Bruno (before allotting a full shot of the upshot), and Germano is singularly exceptional to pull off the brothers’ tricky maneuver, Bruno is a man who is overpowered by sheer devastation, and his delayed reactions are viscerally harrowing to the core. You can dislike Bruno like nobody’s business, but credit when credit is due, Germano’s protean acting is of the first order.

Also there is a bright side, Geremia (Korovkin), an effete, taciturn, sensitive boy who lives with his loony, virile single father Amelio (Montesi) in a prefab, unwittingly gets out of harm’s way because however odd this father-son pair looks, they actually establish a more salutary bond in spite of all the difficulties. They surely don’t share the same wavelength and his uncouthness can put you off, but Amelio never gives up talking to and cheering up the androgynous Geremia, this is what a father should do.

Through and through BAD TALES is a cautionary critique of today’s generational rift, and D’Innocenzo brothers are confidently and well versed in their own syntax of storytelling, the film is often graced with a prismatic exuberance, and the construction of a peculiarly arresting atmosphere of ominousness is also helped by their acuteness in the incidental music (a bricolage of existent pieces), these are a few things which can add some faith in the futurity of Italian cinema, so go figure!

referential entries: Matteo Garrone’s DOGMAN (2018, 7.9/10); Damián Szifrón’s WILD TALES (2014, 8.3/10).

English Title: Bad Tales

Original Title: Favolacce

Year: 2020

Country: Italy, Switzerland

Language: Italian

Genre: Drama

Director/Screenwriter: Fratelli D'Innocenzo

Cinematography: Paolo Carnera

Editing: Esmeralda Calabria

Cast:

Elio Germano

Tommaso Di Cola

Barbara Chichiarelli

Giulietta Rebeggiani

Justin Krovkin

Gabriel Montesi

Ileana D'Ambra

Max Malatesta

Cristina Pellegrino

Giulia Melillo

Lino Musella

Laura Borgioli

Federico Majorana

Aldo Ottobrino

Massimiliano Tortora

Rating: 7.8/10