IDDU
Venice 81 – Competition
Italy/France, 2024 – Director: Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza – Cast: Elio Germano, Toni Servillo, Barbora Bobulova, Fausto Russo Alessi, Antonia Truppo, Tommaso Ragno – Running time: 131′ – Distribution: 01 Distribution
Directing couples work. This is taught by the brothers Coen and Taviani. Homonyms, like the Daniels. Or even those with different names and surnames but aware that when a reciprocal critical gaze corroborates a shared vision, the rest comes of itself. It is interesting to note that another pair of directors, the one formed by Giuseppe Stasi and Giancarlo Fontana, has concentrated in recent years on a mafia, fantasy and classically inspired tale, The Count of Monte Cristo, in their fine series The Bad Guy, whose second season we will see in early 2025. We wish them, too, to make their debut sooner or later in the Venetian competition, as is the case this year for Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza, who, with Iddu, bring a very all-too-true Italian story to the big screen. It is the fugitance, long and certainly facilitated by silences and distractions, of Matteo Messina Denaro, undisputed boss of Cosa Nostra, captured in January 2023 in a private clinic, as curiously predicted by Stasi and Fontana themselves.
One wonders whether it is cinema that draws from reality or vice versa. Grassadonia and Piazza had already spoken of Messina Denaro in their previous film, Sicilian Ghost Story, inspired by the tragic story of Giuseppe Di Matteo, son of Santino, a collaborator of justice who knew too much about the Capaci massacre. His guilt fell on Giuseppe, who, after two years and more of imprisonment, was dissolved in acid a few days before his 15th birthday by order of Iddu, as he is generically referred to in the film. Iddu has the face of Elio Germano, an actor who never backs down when faced with challenges. Iddu is segregated in a flat, and his contact with the world is that of a woman played by Barbora Bobulova. The man is not alone in that house: he is always kept company by the ghosts of his past, from his father to all those whose lives he has taken. Outside, someone offers him something, which paradoxically tastes like freedom. After two participations at the Cannes Film Festival at the Semaine de la Critique, also with their debut film, Salvo, Grassadonia and Piazza leap, with a first-rate cast, which includes, in addition to the aforementioned, Toni Servillo, Tommaso Ragno, Antonia Truppo, that Fausto Russo Alessi much appreciated in Marco Bellocchio’s Rapito, and above all with a story that will inevitably be discussed. But, more importantly, that does not make one forget. Because Matteo Messina Denaro Iddu will not be able to see him, he has joined all those he wished to precede him. But we who are still here, let us not forget him. Above all, let us not forget that one does not disappear for thirty years without someone’s help.
