Aubrey MaloneIt’s nice to have classics in any art form but also refreshing to supplant them. Barbara Pym used to say that she read Jane Austen in the hope that “some of her genius might rub off on me”. But Philip Larkin (an old booster of Pym’s) famously remarked: “I’d prefer to pick up a new Pym than a Jane Austen any day of the week.” I agree with Larkin.
The same precept applies to cinema. Familiar films (such as Gone With the Wind and Casablanca) are frequently cited as iconic benchmarks but then “movie brats” come along and reprise or, hopefully, transcend them.
When I was young, Vittoria de Sica’s The Bicycle Thieves was the film one supposedly had to see to call oneself “clued in” to foreign cinema. It was a wonderful movie to be sure but I often felt its ubiquitousness cut people off from the vast panoply of continental film-makers who were working alongside de Sica, most of whom would forever be unknown to the layman.
And of course de Sica’s other movies weren’t at all in the same league as this one, in contrast to Fellini, Visconti, Antonioni, Bergman and other contemporaries of his, who had much more consistent bodies of work than he had.
Franco Lolli’s Gente de Bien is a kind of homage to The Bicycle Thieves in its theme of a man and his son trying to deal with a poverty-stricken lifestyle. In its sparseness it falls into the naturalistic tradition set by De Sica. (In other senses it’s more akin to Beat Takeshi’s Kikujiro or even Ramin Bahranis’ Man Push Cart).
It’s very endearing and as poignant a portrayal of a broken home as you’ll see. It begins with the mother of the boy, Eric (Bryan Santayana) leaving him and her estranged husband Gabriel (Carlos Fernando Perez) as she goes away on a trip. (We’re not told where or why and we never see her again.)
For the next hour and a half we watch father and son stravaging the streets of Bogota, staying in a dilapidated boarding-house by night (with Eric’s beloved dog Lupe) and by day soliciting the help of others to try and improve their lot.
Gabriel is an unemployed carpenter. He asks his sister for a loan but she refuses. A kindly social worker called Maria Isabel (Alejandra Borrero) invites the pair of them to live with her and her family in her luxurious country residence. But neither of them fit in for different reasons.
Eric is a charming chap but he’s something of a “tough guy” too. He reminded me of a toreador with his insolent look. Gabriel seems almost Christ-like at times but you feel he’s too shiftless ever to make a go of things, especially with the lack of opportunities in the deprivation of Bogota.
Gente de Bien is a little gem. Lolli gives us a series of short scenes that often seem to cut off suddenly. It’s a very effective directorial ploy that copper-fastens the picaresque nature of the film.
It’s chiefly to be recommended for its big heart, something it resolutely refuses to wear on its sleeve.
***** Excellent