Reality

Luciano is a Neapolitan fishmonger, liked in his neighbourhood, a little showy, getting by with his family. He auditions for Big Brother at a shopping centre and becomes convinced he has been accepted. Then he starts waiting. The longer he waits the more certain he becomes that everyone around him has been sent by the producers to observe him, and he starts giving away everything he owns in order to look good. The man at the centre of the film occupies an unusual place in life too. Aniello Arena was serving a life sentence in Italy for taking part, as a teenager, in an organised crime hit squad. Garrone found him as the lead actor of the Fortezza theatre company inside Volterra prison. He first tried to cast him in Gomorrah, but the judge refused; that film was about the mafia and Arena's past made it unsuitable. Because this one is not about crime the permission came through, and Arena was released during the day to shoot. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 2012. A strong choice for anyone interested in films about reality television and the appetite for fame. But Garrone never treats Luciano as a fool, so for a viewer arriving expecting comedy the film moves somewhere steadily more uncomfortable.