Il Divo

With his audacious portrait of Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, writer-director Paolo Sorrentino reinvents the bio-pic—or at least turns it inside out. Although comparisons to Nixon aren't completely off the mark, they're also a little misleading (New York Times critic Stephen Holden's citation of I, Claudius makes more sense). While Oliver Stone offered a conventionally Freudian reading of the former U.S. president, Sorrentino trades backstory for something more intimate yet enigmatic by presenting the seven-time PM's scandal-plagued reign from his subject's perspective. Toni Servillo plays Andreotti as a hunched-up cross between Richard III and Max Schreck's Nosferatu (“Il Divo” translates as “the God” or “the Divine”); instead of walking, he glides from room to room. His other nicknames include the Prince of Darkness, the Black Pope, the Fox, the Sphinx, and the Hunchback. Despite his leadership of the Christian Democratic Party and ties to the Vatican and the Mafia, he comes across as an isolated man with plenty of supplicants but few friends. Under his watch, assassinations of his critics ran rife, but he never did time for murder (Andreotti's refusal to cooperate with terrorists also led to the death of his left-leaning rival Aldo Moro). Il Divo, which won seven David di Donatello Awards in Italy and the Jury Prize at Cannes and has inspired comparisons to Fellini, Kubrick, and Scorsese, as well as Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, carries a certain sense of coldness that will leave some unmoved, but it's undoubtedly among the most fantastic-looking films of the year. Highly recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include a “making-of” featurette (31 min.), deleted scenes (12 min.), an interview with director Paolo Sorrentino (12 min.), a special effects featurette (7 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a winning foreign film.] (K. Fennessy)