Film: Holy Money
Release date: 24th January 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 93 mins
Director: Maxime Alexandre
Starring: Aaron Stanford, Ben Gazzara, Karel Roden, Joaquim de Almeida, Valeria Solarin
Genre: Thriller
Studio: High Fliers
Format: DVD
Country: Italy/Belgium
This is a majority English-language release.
Holy Money tackles a story set in Italy touching on themes of immigration, loss of cultural heritage, religion, crime, and greed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the film is the brainchild of a solicitor and a lawyer; however, unlike in the law courts, fate can play a big hand when miracles are involved.
The two protagonists are Anthony Tregonis (Aaron Stanford) and Dario Barattas (Luca Angeletti), childhood friends from an Italian immigrant community in London. The film starts with a funeral on a rainy day in England; Dario sleeps with the fishes after mysteriously dying in a car accident.
A flashback reveals Anthony writing a love letter for Dario to a woman called Charlotte (Suzanne Bertish), and when Anthony sees her at the funeral, he decides to track her down as things just don’t add up. She reveals that Dario had been playing her for money, and that his will, made only two days before his accident, states that newly bought land in Italy in the form of vineyards have been left to Anthony.
When an Italian stranger bangs on the door at five in the morning, making an offer for the land in cash, Anthony decides to go and see the vineyards for himself. He travels in his red Italian vintage convertible to Sant’Angelo, original hometown of the Tregonis and Barattas families, and where his promised land awaits. As it turns out, the wine made from the grapes on Anthony’s bequeathed vines is undrinkable, which leaves him to ponder why Dario bought the land in the first place.
After a spot of romance with Bianca (Valeria Solarino), caretaker of Anthony’s inn, he decides after all to stay in Sant’Angelo, and hatches a plan to put the town “on the map,” as Dario apparently always wanted. Without prosperous wine from the vines, he decides to construct a miracle in the little church on his land instead. However, the plan backfires, as many dodgy dealers near and far suddenly come out of the woodwork to obtain the land from Anthony, by whatever means possible…
With Holy Money comes the example of too many influences getting in the way of a good story; a story that incidentally comes from award-winning novelist Tonino Benacquista’s book Holy Smoke. When lawyer Gauthier Broze and solicitor Benedikt Van der Vorst read the novel, they thought it a good idea to buy the rights for the film; and it was a good idea – in theory. It has potential to be an entertaining exploit involving romance and intrigue with a twist, or a tongue-in-cheek romp about an Italian/Englishman around estranged Italian countryside; or even a deeper critique on Italian religious and mafia underworlds, but instead the film tries to incorporate all of these films in to one, creating a work of many genres with visible seams.
Nearly all films these days mix genres; it is a necessity to keep making new and entertaining films. We have rom-coms, the comedy-drama, action-adventures, crime-comedies, crime-dramas, etc. However, what is perhaps essential in achieving coherence and stability within genre mixing is the tone that is established and maintained throughout, and what confuses the tone in Holy Money lies in the acting, script and score.
Essentially it is a crime-thriller, but apparently no-one told leading actor Aaron Stanford. It seems his confusion doesn’t come from the plot’s ambiguous twists and turns, but the film itself. One minute he’s a cocky young Englishman denying his Italian roots, the next he’s frolicking around the backwoods of Italy swept off his feet in a romance, and by the end of the film, he’s reaping the just desserts of getting mixed up with criminals, mafia-lords and the Catholic church whilst he lies in a hospital bed with a bullet in his head. If Stanford approached each part of his character’s story as if he were in a crime-thriller, perhaps there wouldn’t be a problem, but instead the acting seems shallow and the tone is not maintained. He doesn’t play a believable character in the film, but an obvious actor in it.
Blame cannot be pinned on Stanford alone - after all, the script barely holds its own. Even Suzanne Bertish only just manages to portray her albeit brief part in the film without embarrassment. It could all lie in the Italian/Belgian production of a predominantly English script, and we have a case of (talent) lost in translation. The music also confuses the audience as to what kind of film they are watching. A thriller needs suspense; fast, slow, teetering music to match the action, but instead there’s a soft, endearing, repetitive guitar melody that wouldn’t be out of place in a light-hearted family caper, and it’s more annoying than charming!
Holy Money proves that although you may have a darn good story on paper, it won’t be enough to plonk a film on top if you haven’t got the matching skill and capacity in production. The potential was lost in this film somewhere between Italy and Belgium, or perhaps just misplaced in the script. What’s for certain is that Benaquista’s book seems a better bet for entertainment value. MI
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