Ancient Curse Fuels 'Fiorile' by David Baron
New Orleans Times-Picayune, March 25, 1994
One of the marvelous things that foreign films regularly convey is a sense of history as a living presence in contemporary lives.
That awareness of the past's lingering reality is at the heart of the Taviani brothers' poignant fable "Fiorile," which tells of the tenacious impact of a 19th century curse on several generations of a northern Italian family.
Presented as a series of extended flashbacks from a culminating, present-day narrative, the Tavianis' tale begins in 1803, when Jean (Michael Vartan), a French soldier from Napoleon's invading army, is shot by a firing squad of his peers. The soldier had fallen in love with a Tuscan peasant girl (Galataea Ranzi) he'd nicknamed Fiorile (after the French Revolutionary calendar's name for the month of May), only to pay the ultimate penalty for the loss of a chest of gold he was supposed to be guarding.
A hundred years later, the Benedetti clan has built a fortune out of that chest of stolen coins. The peasant girl's descendant, Elisa Benedetti (also played by Ranzi) falls victim to romantic misfortune, and when she discovers that her own brothers are to blame - as Fiorile's brother (Claudio Bigagli) was to blame for Jean's death - she avenges her luckless ancestor as well as herself by poisoning them before giving birth to a son.
In the last of "Fiorile's" three long flashbacks, Elisa's grandson Massimo (also played by Vartan) is an idealistic anti-Fascist student who becomes the ironic beneficiary of the family "curse." The final portion of the film depicts Massimo in despondent old age - a reclusive misanthrope whose long-dormant demons are about to be revived during a visit from his grandchildren.
Though this synopsis may make "Fiorile" sound gloomy, the writer-directors strive to imbue their material with humor. The upshot of their efforts is a curiously entertaining study of passion - and the vagaries of human nature - that has something of the mystery and richness of folklore.
Magic is made to transcend tragedy (and melodrama), turning an odyssey through time into a lesson in life's verities.
© The Times-Picayune Publishing Co 1994
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