Boris: The Film

An Italian comedy that came out of a television series. The team had been making a series. Now they are moving to a feature film. René directs. He shouts constantly on set, humiliates everyone, and is satisfied with no take. The producer Diego finds the money. The source is a body close to the Vatican and the condition is plain: the film must carry a religious message. The script is changed. A mafia story had been written; now a saint is inserted. From there the film is a story about a shoot. Rehearsal, costume, budget meetings, crises with actors and a script that keeps changing. Stanis is the lead. He believes himself a great artist, dislikes his lines, and invents his own in every scene. Corinna is in the cast too. She came through the producer's support and cannot act; the crew has a name for it. Alessandro is an assistant. He has worked on sets for years and nobody asks him what he does. What the narrative is interested in is not cinema but an industry: the film describes how a production is shaped by money, favours and fear, and clears no side. The references to Italian television and film are dense. The distribution of funds, political connections and a system that runs on relationships rather than quality sit at the centre. The jokes come from the series' language. The crew uses a jargon among themselves and those formulas became idioms in Italy. The series has to be known. The narrative introduces no character. Francesco Pannofino, Caterina Guzzanti, Alessandro Tiberi and Pietro Sermonti are in the cast. Giacomo Ciarrapico, Mattia Torre and Luca Vendruscolo directed. Who it is for: anyone who has watched the series and likes satire from inside the industry. Who it is not for: anyone who does not know it; most of the jokes rest on the show's accumulation and look scattered on their own.