La Buca (2014)

Directed by: Daniele Cipri
Country: Italy

Movie Review: Filmmaker and cinematographer, Daniele Cipri, is trying to find his own space in contemporary Italian cinema. That particular task is not so simple, and the truth is that by proceeding to a comparison of his two latest works, we observe a significant oscillation in quality. His more recent comedy “La Buca” adopts the same stirring posture (very Italian) as used in the accomplished “It Was a Son”, dated from 2012. Both are satires, so why the former stays a few steps behind the latter? There was a bunch of very defined factors that made that difference to loom. “It Was a Son” satirizes the greediness of a Sicilian family after the accidental death of one of their children in a shootout between Mafia gangsters. The story was sufficiently funny, straightforward and expressive in order to grab immediately our attention. “La Buca”, in turn, takes a long time chewing the adventures of a not less greedy lawyer who tries to live from monetary compensations obtained by fake injuries or accidents. The film was unable to flow accordingly, not even when Oscar, the whimsical lawyer, tries to win a genuine case for a fragile man, Armando, who was condemned to 30 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. The characters were not so interesting, and of course Oscar Castellitto and Valeria Bruna Tedeschi fall short when weighed with the magnificent Toni Servillo and Giselda Volodi, stars in “It Was a Son”. If this wasn’t enough, “La Buca” throws ungracious jokes that explains its blandness as a comedy and compromises its intentions to mock with the already ridiculous situation. Only Armando’s senile mother lets my face broke into a grin, which is meager for a comedy.