Short films, usually considered the purview of up-and-coming directors eager to demonstrate their potential, can also serve to provide the most established of filmmakers with fertile ground for experimentation. Marco Bellochio’s Se Posso Permettermi pulls off the fun trick of doing both at once. One of the most prolific directors in Italy, Bellochio produced the first chapter of the series – which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in 2021 – alongside a group of advanced film students in the Fare Cinema programme. For this second chapter – a more intimate instalment conceived as a comic farewell to his childhood home (and shot mainly within its walls) – Bellochio goes it alone.
Set in the director’s hometown of Bobbio, both chapters centre a mildly off-putting character by the name of Fausto (a flawless Fausto Russo Alesi). Deluded and self-important, the overeducated and perennially unemployed Fausto mooches a living off his elderly mother and contributes nothing to society. In the absence of work, a spouse, or even friends, this middle-aged man-child appears content to do little more than pontificate, drink coffee in the local cafe, and pass judgments on the strangers who populate his small town (whether they’re interested or not). While chapter one followed Fausto around town as he maddeningly offered invasive, offensive, and unsolicited advice to every woman he encountered, chapter two catches up with him three years later in a terrible predicament. His mother now deceased; Fausto is teetering on the brink of financial disaster. With his creditors banging at the door and no prospects, he has no option but to sell the family home and consider something that has never before crossed his mind: work.
Early on in the film, a realtor shows the house to a young couple, much to the chagrin of Barbara, his late mother’s nurse. Barbara, you see, was promised the house in exchange for her years of service. Understandably furious, she chases the group out of the house, waking the bumbling Fausto from his slumber. Sympathetic but in a bind himself, he encourages her, strangely, to sue him. Searching for a mutually beneficial resolution, she offers to pay off his debts and to let him keep a room in the house on one condition: he gets a job. Finding this an absurd proposition, he turns her down. Further enraged by Fausto’s lack of common sense, Barbara storms out, threatening to set fire to his extensive but worthless collection of books.
Paralyzed by indecision, Fausto is visited in short order by a series of townspeople offering an increasingly outlandish set of solutions to his predicament. Unfortunately, finding himself with no desire to enter into a sham marriage, turn his family home into a haunted house, or get into business with the local parish priest, he flees, wandering the streets aimlessly until the break of dawn. Eventually, stumbling back into the house with no more clarity than before, he catches Barbara with a pair of thieves trying to open the family safe. Mildly, he offers up the combination. He already knows it’s empty. Anything of value was sold off long ago. The thieves tell him off in disgust before setting out in search of a more promising target. As the sun comes up, he and Barbara sip their coffee in quiet futility, the future as hazy as ever.
Given this film’s commentary on the insidious inertia of inaction, I find it interesting that Bellochio – tireless workhorse that he is – has said he sees a bit of himself in Fausto. Now eighty-four years old, Bellochio was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Venice Film Festival more than a decade ago, but shows no signs of slowing down. Truly, Fausto is not only unsympathetic but gratingly irritating, and I was never quite sure why Bellochio seemed so taken with him. At one point in the film, another character contemptibly describes him as a parasite (I may or may not have muttered amen under my breath) … and he agrees! Bellochio may harbour an inexplicable affection for this character, but I for one am glad to be free of his company.
Se Posso Permettermi Capitolo II premieres at the 81st Venice International Film Festival.
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