Up to the very last moment, rumours were circulating that Cronache del Terzo Millennio, announced at Cannes 1996 with the title The Demolition, would be screened in competition at Venice, as the third Italian film to run for the Golden Lion. But Maselli's tradition of being out of competition in Venice started in 1988 with Codice Privato, starring Ornella Muti, and continued with L'Alba, starring Nastassja Kinski is maintained once again.
This latest film from Maselli, the Italian director who discovered Valeria Golino with Storia d'amore, is a choral portrait of a metropolitan community set at the end of this century. With no single character predominating, the film uses a realistic and sympathetic viewpoint to follow the changing fortunes, the conflicts and the love affairs of a group of outcasts, showing aspects of urban life that are often ignored.
The central character of the film is actually the place where the story is set, a solitary apartment block that could be in the outskirts of any big city in the world. A beehive ruled by criminal organisations, where beggars, prostitutes and drug pedlars can live and 'work' freely without police interference, the building is about to be demolished, to be replaced by a huge residential complex.
In Maselli's film, the apartment block becomes a metaphor for the different ways in which modern urban society reacts to the overpowering economical system. The threat of demolition provokes a number of responses from the inhabitants: some of them seem indifferent, some try to set up an organised resistance, while others seem to anticipate some profit from the event.
Indeed, Maselli's latest work offers itself as a chronicle of our times, full of panic and desperation, told and analysed in depth.
Ivo Bonacorsi
Prod cos: Tre a Production, Esse Ci Cinematografica
Prod: Corrado and Alessandro Canzio
Dir/scr: Francesco Maselli
Ph: Pierluigi Santi
Ed: Carlo Valerio
Prod des: Pietro Norarianni
Music: Giovanna Marini
Running time: 85 mins
Int sales: Sacis
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