With a sold-out curtain-raising preview of LORO, Paolo Sorrentino's latest Felliniesque politico-social vaudeville the latest Cinema Made in Italy launched its sunniest showcase of new Italian features in the Cine Lumiere, the French-owned art deco art-house in the heart of London's South Kensington arrondissement (running 26 February to 3 March 2019).
It was a day full of optimismo, after Signora May announced for the first time a potential delay to Brexit, and the whole of Albion basked in weather more usual in May than at the end of the UK's deeply discontented winter. Indeed, a record temperature of +20 deg Centigrade was recorded in not-too-distant Kew Gardens. Se non e vero e ben trovato.
A very fitting backdrop to the sardonic Sardinia-set satire of the rise and fall (and tumescence perhaps rather than further rise) of Silvio Berlusconi and his attendant follies and carnival of corruption and deceptions.
Phillip Bergson www.institut-francais.org.uk