Paperjam

The Family Friend

Film // Jim // 16th May 2007

I saw this thing about A&R men at a record label once. During a day of listening to tapes that got sent in, they would listen to something undisputedly classy in between each shocking demo to make sure that they were operating at the right level. Sort of clearing the critical palette I suppose. As I recall they were listening to all manner of sent in indie-ish rubbish interspersed with the odd blast of Otis Redding from some big flash stereo. They were completely right, the contrast couldn’t have been more marked.

Last week I went to Spiderman 3 and I didn’t think it was very good. In fact after about an hour and a half I turned round to the irritating little wankers (who I had growled at to shut the fuck up after five minutes) and told them that they might as well start talking about Dunst’s norks again, as it was likely to be more entertaining than the rest of the film. Which it was.

I’ve heard people say that Spiderman 3 suffers from being too long, suffers from too many characters, suffers from being an inconclusive conclusion to a trilogy.

No, these people are all wrong, Spiderman 3 suffers from being complete shit – end of story.

Admittedly I only thought it was very shit when I left the cinema, but now having been to see The Family Friend at the Spa Centre cinema tonight a bit of contrast and perspective has been afforded and I can now see that Spiderman 3 is absolute, total liquid excrement, shat out from Satan’s own foul and fiery sphincter.

The Family Friend (or L’amico di Famiglia) on the other hand is really very good indeed. It probably cost about the same as one ten-millionth of the budget for Tobey Maguire’s terrifying “evil” haircut, but has more style, substance, pathos and entertainment in the opening credit sequence than Spiderman 3 has in its entire seventeen hour running time.

It is the tale of one of the most unpleasant leading characters I can remember. An elderly small-town loan shark named Geremia, who considers himself a charitable helping hand to those in need in a bit of cash. In reality he is a horribly twisted bully, not averse to extorting sex from a bride on her wedding morning in order to cut down the interest on the repayments that her dad is going to have to stump up.

The plot involves what might be a change of luck for the pathetic leading man and the misery that he manages to spread about the place by going about his business. The film has a really unique atmosphere, brought about by the way it is filmed with immaculate camera movements and an amazing use of music. There are bursts of strange electronic ambient stuff, classical bits and tracks from Antony and The Johnsons and LCD Soundsystem.

Despite the squalid appearance and lifestyle of Geremia (him cleaning his bed-ridden mum in his shithole of a flat is particularly nasty) the film is amazingly stylish in a way that only really cool Italian films can be, there are some really arresting images (especially the bit right at at the start), there are little set-pieces done in slo-mo and there is what you would have to call a slight preoccupation with looking admiringly at ladies.

By the time the film reaches its end everything feels a little inconclusive and slightly odd which is definitely in keeping with the rest of it. However I would argue that being left with a feeling of confusion and intrigue is always better than watching some half arsed Hollywood shitheads flying around a lot and then crying about it for half an hour.

In a totally pointless postscript, I’d also add that the dancing scene in The Family Friend is far superior to the whole “evil” strutting and dancing bit in Spiderman 3; a sequence so embarrassing that it made me want to subject everyone involved to the Ludovico technique to ensure that it could never, ever happen again.