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The Ottawa Citizen
May 27, 1994
Legend of love displays exquisite cinematic style
by Jay Stone
The Taviani brothers' Fiorile is the sweeping story of two centuries in the life of an Italian family and the curse attached to their terrible wealth.
It is sweeping, but not sprawling; more folk tale than saga. It's the ghost story your Italian grandmother told you. The Tavianis -- who won hearts with Padre Padrone and The Night of the Shooting Stars and lost them with later failures such as Good Morning Babylon -- turn to their native Tuscany for this legend of love, betrayal and stolen gold.
They turn it into a kind of fable, told in a smooth and engaging style that is a model of cinematic storytelling.
Fiorile is related in flashback in a framing story that has a modern family -- the Benedettis -- travelling through the gorgeous Tuscan countryside to visit grandfather. On the way, the father tells them about the family curse that has caused the locals to call them the Maledettis.
The story starts during the Napoleonic invasion of Italy, and out of the window of the modern-day family van, we see the French soldiers marching through Tuscany.
Among them is a handsome young lieutenant named Jean (Michael Vartan), whose job it is to guard a chest of gold.
Ah, but love is in the air, the French soldiers are in Italy, and soon Jean is cavorting with Elisabetta Benedetti (Galatea Ranzi), whom he names Fiorile, the Revolutionary calendar's name for May.
They cavort, the gold is unguarded, and it is stolen by no other than Corrado Benedetti (Claudio Bigagli), Elisabetta's brother. The army says the French lieutenant will be shot unless the gold is returned, but the Benedettis keep it hidden. Elisabetta swears revenge, not knowing it is her own family that has betrayed her lover.
In the second section of Fiorile it is the early 1900s, and the Benedettis are as rich as the Medicis. Now young Elisa (Ranzi again) is in love with a local peasant, but her politician brother (Bigagli again) schemes to send him and his family away. When Elisa finds out, she takes her own revenge.
The third story takes place during the Second World War, with Elisa's grandson Massimo (Vartan again), a callow youth who takes inspiration from his ancestor Jean -- the unlucky French lieutenant -- and even speaks to his spirit. Massimo joins the resistance, but is caught by the fascist Black Shirts.
Such is the family curse that Massimo is spared execution, the ultimate form of exclusion from the group, and he grows up to be the grandfather the family is visiting.
The present and past weave across the Tuscan fields as the van arrives at the grandfather's house, where the many themes of the film -- including poison mushrooms and the ghost of Jean -- come together and we see the Maledetti curse worming into the hearts of the younger generation.
Despite its historic grandeur and big themes, Fiorile is in many ways a small movie, a down-to-earth tale not about Love or History, but about the people living through it.
It is a celebration of The Story, and it has the most important characteristic of storytelling: it makes us long to know what happens next.
© CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp.
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