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- <text id=94TT1465>
- <title>
- Oct. 24, 1994: Cinema:Hey, Nanni
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1994
- Oct. 24, 1994 Boom for Whom?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- ARTS & MEDIA/CINEMA, Page 77
- Hey, Nanni
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> Moretti's Caro Diario is a breezy trip toward mortality
- </p>
- <p>By Richard Corliss
- </p>
- <p> Let's take a look at the fall fashions in movie directors' egos.
- Quentin Tarantino shows up in his own film, Pulp Fiction, and
- has everybody talk like him--which is fine, since he's a great
- talker. Wes Craven, director of A Nightmare on Elm Street, takes
- himself very seriously now, so he calls his new picture Wes
- Craven's New Nightmare, and it is the ultimate in self-reverential
- cinema.
- </p>
- <p> Then there's Nanni Moretti, who displays a more genial egotism.
- Though the Italian actor-writer-director is in every scene of
- Caro Diario (Dear Diary)--an episodic film that is the equivalent
- of an artist's sketchbook--his is a skeptical, almost modest
- form of auteur hubris.
- </p>
- <p> Join Nanni on his Vespa, motoring through Rome, savoring the
- barren landscape, stopping at the spot where Pasolini was murdered,
- singing along with an outdoor band and looking--in his beard,
- dark glasses and black shirt--like an anarchist who has joined
- the Ricky Ricardo Orchestra. Visit the Italian islands with
- Nanni and his bookish friend (Renato Carpentieri) as they see
- their friends utterly dominated by bratty kids. Get lost in
- the labyrinth of Italian medicine as Nanni consults dozens of
- doctors to discover the source of a skin rash, only to learn
- troubling truths about his body and their expertise.
- </p>
- <p> This concluding vignette ends his vacation-like jaunt with a
- crash against the brick wall of mortality. But that still can't
- shake Moretti's take-it-as-it-comes philosophy. For this engaging
- artist, in life as on a scooter, the journey is the adventure.
- </p>
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
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