Every time someone sits down to watch a film, there’s an agreement made between the filmmakers and the viewer. It is almost like a contract: if the viewers offers their time and the willingness to suspend their disbelief, in exchange the filmmakers offers their art. This arrangement requires some trust from both parties, and filmmakers often violate that trust because, well, their movies are no good. Bad Tales, an Italian drama from Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, is not a bad film in the traditional sense. It is formally rigorous, and well-acted. Instead, its failure is a moral one. It preys upon trusting audiences, and does not justify the wringer it puts them through.
The epilogue is deliberately disorienting. Over a series of images without context, a narrator (Max Tortora) explains how he found the diary of a young girl. He found the diary interesting, mostly in terms of what the girl withheld, so he decided to fill in the gaps – perhaps as a creative exercise. The film depicts that diary, along with those gaps. Of course, there is no way to tell whether the narrator is reliable. This could be a “true story” like Fargo is a true story. Either way, the film is an unsettling mix of childlike innocence and adult frankness. There are several children in this film, and all of them are victims of some senseless trauma. There is a sense of Todd Solondz to this material – Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness might be inspirations for Bad Tales – but the D’Innocenzo brothers do not add any black humor to the material like Solondz does.
Few characters in this film have redeemable qualities. Bruno (Elio Germano) is a stay-at-home dad with a hair-trigger temper and a streak of sadism. His best friend Pietro (Max Malatesta) loathes him, and barely hides his misanthropy. Amelio (Gabriel Montesi) is a loser who offers no stability for his awkward son Geremia (Justin Korovkin), and would rather treat him like a buddy than as a parent. The D’Innocenzo brothers follows this small community over the course of one languid summer, and depicts seemingly normal events. There are cookouts, play dates, and even a subplot about young love, all of which unfold with a sinister subtext. Maybe there are households in this small community that are full of happiness and support, but these filmmakers have no interest in them.
There is nothing inherently wrong with films about suburban ennui and dystopia. But what makes this one so unpleasant is how, time and time again, these characters have no sense of how they hurt each other. Sometimes it is obvious, like when Bruno beats his son Dennis (Tommaso Di Cola) or when Dennis – who is maybe 10 years old – deals with sexual advances from Vilma (Ileana D’Ambra), an adult woman who is visibly pregnant. Sometimes the trauma is more oblique, like when Geremia wears oversized clothes for his petite frame, probably because his father is too poor/irresponsible for anything else, and no one really comments or steps in to help. No matter how experienced or innocent these characters, they have no interests beyond raw instinct.
In formal terms, Bad Tales can be immersive to the point of confusion. The D’Innocenzo brothers deliberately avoid establishing shots, opting for POV compositions without much context. There is a smash cut to the characters swimming in the ocean, for example, but no transition of the characters at the beach. This creates a sense of intrigue to the film, since the viewer has to make sense of what they see as the drama unfolds. Once the film finally develops its patterns, that intrigue loses its luster. The look is the right match for the material: it films its empty Italian suburb with a mix of beauty and decay. This community appears lived-in, but also forgotten by the rest of the world.
The dark, irredeemable climax of Bad Tales presents a challenge for a critic whose instinct is not to spoil things, to let viewers discovers a film’s secrets for themselves. But what happens in in this film is so unpleasant one feels an obligation to warn the viewer. Spoilers ahead: Bad Tales ends with a suicide event involving children. The directors depict their small, lifeless bodies. This is the sort of thing that is particularly upsetting to certain viewers, and certainly it will inspire walkouts (or the virtual equivalent). Not all films require a happy, tidy ending, except the trouble is that the D’Innocenzo brothers do not put the work to justify this climax, and instead depict cruelty without much moral rigor. That is the problem with this film in a nutshell: it wants to provoke, but it does not earn any of its provocations.
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