Il Matrimonio

Ten years ago, on a Calabrian hillside, Paola Salerno filmed the preparations for the wedding of her younger brother, Checco. An oblique viewpoint opens the film: a friend and old love of the filmmaker’s recounts a little of their couple’s story. This off-centre first-person who is fundamentally embedded in his entourage immediately complicates the family film. Before introducing the existential musings on tablecloth patterns and the lay-out of tables for the open-air buffet, the film seduces us with the gentle gratuitousness of the bustling excitement, which we feel is appeased by the summer air. One of the guests is rehearsing a text that she is to recite, another is exercising her voice for the Ave maria, a sax player is warming up, while the groom, a veterinary surgeon, cavorts around the garden, his silhouette tall but childlike. His apparent insouciance marks him out from his four sisters, and injects a hint of discord into the lively summer evening discussions. Basically, why get married? Checco’s family, which he describes as “unconventional” before letting slip a less affable side remark (“a family of nutters”), has nothing in common with the more traditionalist family of his future bride. The fleeting but splendid shot of the filmmaker’s now teenage daughter, Bianca, gives this underlying discord a welcome temporal patina. (Charlotte Garson)