TONI SERVILLO ON SCREEN AND IN PERSON Fire and Ice
July 27-29, 2009
Don't miss Toni Servillo in person on Mon July 27 at 6pm!
To purchase tickets online click on theSHOWTIME under Buy Tickets.
Single Screening Tickets: $7 members/students/child - $8 senior - $11 public
Online service charge: $1.25 per ticket ordered. Cash only at the box office.
The Consequences of Love / Le conseguenze dell’amore
Paolo Sorrentino, Italy, 2004; 100m
Philip Kemp in Sight and Sound declared that “Servillo’s unblinking performance
dominates the film."
The recipient of five David di Donatello Awards (including best actor for Servillo), The Consequences of Love follows a mafia accountant condemned to a life of isolation while laundering of the mob’s ill-gotten profits. Servillo unforgettably renders the anguish of this lonely and desperate man, who is struck by love (in the magnificent guise of Olivia Magnani) and prepares to pay the ultimate price for his newfound passion. Sorrentino’s provocative shooting in winter landscapes brings us into his characters, just as their avenues of escape are closed off.
V.A. Musetto of the New York Post describes the actor’s performance as “worthy of an Oscar nomination” and Jay Weissberg of Variety calls it a “towering performance”.
Paolo Sorrentino takes on postwar Italian politics and brilliantly succeeds in taming this enormously unwieldy subject, focusing on the rise/fall/rise of one of its key players, Giulio Andreotti. Seven times Italy’s prime minister, stoop-shouldered, slow moving, and pensive, Andreotti nevertheless contained boundless inner energy, a quality captured by Servillo in a marvelous, award-winning performance. Ever the innovator, Sorrentino creates a dialogue between scenes, representing the world as it looks to Andreotti and to outsiders who explore the causes or consequences of his actions. An extraordinarily original work of real political insight and cinematic imagination.
The Girl by the Lake / La ragazza del lago Andrea Molaioli, Italy, 2007; 95m
Servillo earned a Pasinetti Award in 2007 at Venice as well as a David di Donatello Award for Best Actor for his work.
In a peaceful town surrounded by mountains a beautiful young woman is found naked and dead on the shore of a lake. Called in from the provincial capital to investigate, police inspector Giovanni Sanzio (Servillo) finds no signs of a struggle but plenty of local suspects. Servillo brings just the right amount of ironic world-weariness to a character who must see the worst in people. Co-starring Valeria Golina, Fabrizio Gifuni, and Marco Baliani.
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone describes Servillo’s performance as “superb”.
In this deft interweaving of five stories, the reach of the Italian organized crime empire the Camorra extends from the heights of haute couture to the depths of toxic waste, and director Matteo Garrone coolly observes all the attendant brutality. (You’ll never ogle movie-star high fashion in the same way again.) Servillo heads a strong cast as a lethally smooth businessman in a sharp suit who specializes in the illegal dumping of corporate poisons. ~2008 New York Film Festival
Thanks to Griselda Guerrasio of Cinecitta/Filmitalia for helping to make this series possible.
Toni Servillo will also star in Carlo Goldoni’s Trilogia
della villeggiatura (which he adapted and directed) at the Lincoln Center Festival, July 22-26. For more information visit Lincoln Center Festival.
