Chicago – Like Sebastián Silva’s equally mesmerizing and maddening “Magic Magic,” Matteo Garrone’s “Reality” explores a psyche as it slowly unravels, obscuring the line between truth and fiction until it becomes hopelessly blurred. In fact, both filmmakers utilize a similar technique in portraying their heros’ delusions by occupying their peripheral vision with eerie apparitions.
This might make “Reality” sound like a horror film, but it’s actually a Felliniesque comedy—at least for its first act. A surprising portion of the film’s running time is devoted to detailing the modest life of Luciano (Aniello Arena), a fishmonger with an adoring wife (Loredana Paone) and family who harbors an exuberant love of performance. We first see him greeting a Reality TV show star, Enzo (Raffaele Ferrante), in full drag, playing the role of a smitten ex. Though the faces of his surrounding audience are delighted, the scene straddles the line between amusing and squirm-inducing.
This might make “Reality” sound like a horror film, but it’s actually a Felliniesque comedy—at least for its first act. A surprising portion of the film’s running time is devoted to detailing the modest life of Luciano (Aniello Arena), a fishmonger with an adoring wife (Loredana Paone) and family who harbors an exuberant love of performance. We first see him greeting a Reality TV show star, Enzo (Raffaele Ferrante), in full drag, playing the role of a smitten ex. Though the faces of his surrounding audience are delighted, the scene straddles the line between amusing and squirm-inducing.
- 8/26/2013
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
★★★★☆ The Taviani brothers explored a Shakespeare production performed by a group of prison inmates earlier in the year with Caesar Must Die (2012). Matteo Garrone, who arrived on the international scene to great acclaim with hard-hitting Mafioso drama Gomorrah (2008), has now gone one step further. Out on DVD this week is Reality (2012), a film for which he enlisted the incarcerated Aniello Arena; who attended the shoot whilst on day release from his life sentence. Bringing an unmistakable sense of wonderment to proceedings, he proves an irresistible protagonist in Garrone's biting satire of cultural degeneration.
The Roman director may have returned to the familiar streets of Naples for his latest piece, but it adopts a markedly different tone to that of its predecessor. Exploring the pervasive modern preoccupation with celebrity, the film delves into the somewhat queasy world of a man desperate to appear on reality television. Luciano (Arena) is a fishmonger in an unassuming Neapolitan piazza.
The Roman director may have returned to the familiar streets of Naples for his latest piece, but it adopts a markedly different tone to that of its predecessor. Exploring the pervasive modern preoccupation with celebrity, the film delves into the somewhat queasy world of a man desperate to appear on reality television. Luciano (Arena) is a fishmonger in an unassuming Neapolitan piazza.
- 7/23/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Matteo Garrone's comedy moralises that the call of reality-show fame isn't a worthy pursuit. No surprise there
Matteo Garrone (director of the Italian mob drama Gomorrah) has confected a sentimental-realist fable about celebrity culture and its discontents, and it certainly has a resonance in the age of Beppe Grillo and the Five Stars Movement. But nothing in Reality quite lives up to its thrilling and dynamic opening sequence. After a Fellini-style swoop from high above the streets of Naples, Garrone's camera descends to a wedding reception at a resort hotel, where one guest, a voluble fishmonger called Luciano (Aniello Arena), is planning on doing his unfunny party piece to amuse the others – a wacky drag act. But a bona fide celebrity steps in: a former Big Brother contestant called Enzo (Raffaele Ferrante) has been booked to make a personal appearance, and poor Luciano is stunned with awe and envy...
Matteo Garrone (director of the Italian mob drama Gomorrah) has confected a sentimental-realist fable about celebrity culture and its discontents, and it certainly has a resonance in the age of Beppe Grillo and the Five Stars Movement. But nothing in Reality quite lives up to its thrilling and dynamic opening sequence. After a Fellini-style swoop from high above the streets of Naples, Garrone's camera descends to a wedding reception at a resort hotel, where one guest, a voluble fishmonger called Luciano (Aniello Arena), is planning on doing his unfunny party piece to amuse the others – a wacky drag act. But a bona fide celebrity steps in: a former Big Brother contestant called Enzo (Raffaele Ferrante) has been booked to make a personal appearance, and poor Luciano is stunned with awe and envy...
- 3/22/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Editor’s note: This review originally ran during Cannes 2012, but we’re re-running it as the film’s limited theatrical release begins this weekend. Those expecting Matteo Garrone to follow up 2008′s excellent Gomorrah with another authentic new world crime drama might be surprised to hear that his latest project replaces the seedy criminal underworld for a thoroughly modern exploration of the current fascination with reality TV and its particular brand of disposable fame. In Reality, we follow the tragi-comic story of Luciano (Aniello Arena), a Neapolitan fishmonger with aspirations to find his fortune on the Italian version of Big Brother at the behest of his family who see him as a star and inspired by the success of former housemate Enzo (Raffaele Ferrante). We also follow his subsequent delusional breakdown. Reality is effectively Garrone’s take on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, replacing the golden ticket with the chance to make it into the Big...
- 3/16/2013
- by Simon Gallagher
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Title: Reality Oscilloscope Laboratories Director: Matteo Garrone Screenwriter: Maurizio Braucci, Ugo Chiti, Matteo Garrone, Massimo Gaudioso Cast: Aniello Arena, Loredana Simioli, Raffaele Ferrante, Nando Paone Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 3/7/13 Opens: March 15, 2013 Most people will turn their heads even in New York if Robert De Niro, Al Pacino or Tom Cruise passed by on the street. Americans, like people the world over, are attracted by celebrity, particularly since here in the U.S. more people have TVs than bathtubs. We’re all an audience. But how many people seriously think that they can themselves become famous, so much so that people will turn their heads when they walk down [ Read More ]
The post Reality Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post Reality Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 3/8/2013
- by Harvey Karten
- ShockYa
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone couldn’t have really opted for something much more different for his next feature, for though it boasts the same piercing authenticity as Gomorrah, Garrone paints with a savagely satirical brush this time around. The first person we meet in Reality is Enzo (Raffaele Ferrante), a Big Brother star attending a function to a rapturous response from the crowd; we quickly observe the seemingly senseless idolatry that goes with his celebrity status, and we wonder, what has he actually done to deserve such plaudits?
While hardly the most inventive or unique satire, Reality is clever and surreal, observing how far reality TV’s grasp has reached, with children even being held in its obsessive thrall now, enthusiastically turning up to watch the auditions for the new Big Brother series. Garrone touches on people’s desperation merely to mean something, no matter if...
Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone couldn’t have really opted for something much more different for his next feature, for though it boasts the same piercing authenticity as Gomorrah, Garrone paints with a savagely satirical brush this time around. The first person we meet in Reality is Enzo (Raffaele Ferrante), a Big Brother star attending a function to a rapturous response from the crowd; we quickly observe the seemingly senseless idolatry that goes with his celebrity status, and we wonder, what has he actually done to deserve such plaudits?
While hardly the most inventive or unique satire, Reality is clever and surreal, observing how far reality TV’s grasp has reached, with children even being held in its obsessive thrall now, enthusiastically turning up to watch the auditions for the new Big Brother series. Garrone touches on people’s desperation merely to mean something, no matter if...
- 10/11/2012
- by Shaun Munro
- Obsessed with Film
The blowhard standing in the Annie Hall movie line was right, of course: After a while, Federico Fellini really did get to be an “indulgent” filmmaker. But before that dreaded word Felliniesque was turned into a lazy pop- cultural signifier for clowns, dwarves, big-bosomed earth- mother Italian sirens, and a general wearying frenzy of circuslike surrealism, it was a term — and a film aesthetic — that meant something, that conjured the modern madness of everyday life. Reality, the first film directed by Matteo Garrone since Gomorra (2008) — his coldly visionary dissection of an Italian society run at every level by the Mafia...
- 5/18/2012
- by Owen Gleiberman
- EW - Inside Movies
Garrone Explores Religious Devotion via Society’s Addiction to Reality Television
Gloriously produced and appropriately unhinged, Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone returns for his second trip to the Cannes Competition with this compelling network of topical and important ideas. Pulling from the handbooks of recent films about fame and reality television (i.e. The Truman Show, which it inverts, and Sara Goldfarb’s addiction meltdown in Requiem for a Dream), there’s a Buñuelian scent that wonders into the air around the midpoint that tips off the more devious agenda at play. Eventually, Garrone’s film exposes an endearing kinship to Visconti’s morose Death in Venice. Not as elegant as Visconti, nor as keen as Buñuel, Garrone’s film is, nonetheless, one that holds its weight in this company.
In the drawn out set-up, we meet Luciano (Aniello Arena) who, along with his family, seems to have a slightly more...
Gloriously produced and appropriately unhinged, Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone returns for his second trip to the Cannes Competition with this compelling network of topical and important ideas. Pulling from the handbooks of recent films about fame and reality television (i.e. The Truman Show, which it inverts, and Sara Goldfarb’s addiction meltdown in Requiem for a Dream), there’s a Buñuelian scent that wonders into the air around the midpoint that tips off the more devious agenda at play. Eventually, Garrone’s film exposes an endearing kinship to Visconti’s morose Death in Venice. Not as elegant as Visconti, nor as keen as Buñuel, Garrone’s film is, nonetheless, one that holds its weight in this company.
In the drawn out set-up, we meet Luciano (Aniello Arena) who, along with his family, seems to have a slightly more...
- 5/18/2012
- by Blake Williams
- IONCINEMA.com
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