Giovanni Falcone and Francesca Morvillo, their love story (and mafia) is too great to be told like this
The ambition behind the film in theaters from Thursday 15 May, “Francesca and Giovanni” directed by four hands by Ricky Tognazzi and Simona Izzo was great. The two directors proposed to tell the figure of Francesca Morvillo, magistrate and wife of Giovanni Falcone, also killed in the massacre of Capaci on Saturday 23 May 1992. A ambition that, on accounts made and finished vision, seems to have been too large. Tognazzi and Izzo entrusted the part of their Francesca Morvillo to Ester Pantano, while Primo Reggiani was chosen for the part of the judge Falcone. Also in the cast: Anna Ferruzzo, Giovanni Arezzo and Simona Taormina.
Francesca and Giovanni, the plot
Francesca Morvillo is a young and brilliant Palermo magistrate, engaged on the minors front at risk and happily married with a university professor of law. His life flows all in all quiet, however calm the life of any Palermo magistrate committed to the front line in those years in which the mafia wars and then the attack on the state are called quietly. To spark the cards and to upset her life comes the fatal encounter with Giovanni Falcone, a highly esteemed anti -mafia judge who carries on his battles with rigor and without looking at anyone. The meeting, we said, will be fatal, because Francesca Morvillo falls in love with the judge Falcone, leaves her husband and faces every risk and opponent by his side until the last of her breaths.
Francesca and Giovanni, a story of love and mafia but without depth
The intention of the authors of Francesca and Giovanni – A story of love and mafia was very interesting, that is to look inside the lives broken by the attack of Capaci and in particular within the life of Francesca Morvillo, wife of Giovanni Falcone, an objective of the number of the attack and magistrate herself, which he did, unfortunately for her, the first magistrate killed by the mafia. The idea was therefore good, and the very noble intention wanting to contribute to giving the right light to a figure still little told. Unfortunately, however, tappened, the realization did not prove to be at the height of the initiative.
The film focuses a lot on Francesca Morvillo’s love events, and only in the first part is the commitment with minors at risk. On the other hand, already entitled the intention of focusing on the sentimental events is declared, the problem is that the story always remains rather on the surface, and the viewer never manages to truly empathize with the emotional disturbances of a woman who, first, is overwhelmed by a love so shocking as to convince her to throw a marriage to the air, then finds himself entangled in a very powerful story but always weighs the shadow of fear and death. Perennially looming. While Palermo burns and many heroes of the anti -mafia and friends and colleagues of Francesca and Giovanni fall out of service, we are unable to really enter the anxieties and thoughts of the magistrate also. And this is mainly due to a too patinated, always soft packaging that avoids the roughness and the most acute acute accents that would serve to tell two lives that support themselves and complement each other in mutual love but that are perfectly aware that the happy ending will arrive very hardly for them.
A film that uses the patterns and aesthetics of the generalist fiction but, as sometimes happens with fiction, chooses not to go deep. And in front of a story like this, such a choice can only make you think: shame, a wasted opportunity.
VOTE: 4.5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrjwwbtlksy