Film: David's Birthday
Year of production: 2009
UK Release date: 30th May 2011
Distributor: TLA
Certificate: 15
Running time: 106 mins
Director: Marco Filiberti
Starring: Alessandro Gassman, Maria de Medeiros, Massimo Poggio, Michela Cescon, Christo Jivkov
Genre: Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Italy
Language: Italian
Review by: Mary Igoe
Director Marco Filiberti brings the ancient form of tragedy back to the masses in his latest film set on the sunny coast of Italy. With themes of forbidden love and destiny in the running, can such an old formula from the stage be a modern-day success on the screen?
The film starts with two couples at the opera. Psychologist Matteo (Massimo Poggio) is married to Francesca (Maria de Medeiros) and they have a young daughter together who barely features. Big kid slacker Diego (Alessandro Gassman) is married to the strong-spirited Shery (Michela Cescon) and they have a grown son, David (Thyago Alves). The foursome decide to spend a holiday at the beach, during which time David will join them from his studies in America to celebrate his birthday.
At first, all seems fair and well on the jolly holiday by the sea, but at the arrival of David, things start to go a bit iffy. To start with, there’s ambiguity as to the relationship between Matteo and David, which quickly unravels itself and we become aware that Matteo is in fact repressing lustful feelings for the young Adonis from the States. Meanwhile, Diego and Shery get on each other’s nerves within their love/hate relationship, and then there’s Shery’s brother Leonard (Christo Jivkov) who comes to stay for a bit, and it’s unclear as to whether he’s murdered his wife or not.
Meanwhile, a side-story sees Matteo briefly leaving the holiday twice to visit a patient, who it turns out is enduring a desperate attempt of escapism.
As the temperature mounts during a hot summer, so does the tension. Leonard and Shery have their moments suspecting something of the increasingly irritable Matteo, although never find out the truth. And then finally Matteo and David get their frantic moment alone together, but with tragic consequences…
Woe betide this party of friends who, from the very opening of the film, witness forbidden love and tragedy as they watch Wagner’s opera ‘Tristan And Isolde’. From there on in, a sense of foreboding follows every turn of the storyline, not least achieved by the hounding, teetering, eerie score which hunts every scene with a hunger of tormented pace for what’s around the corner.
David’s Birthday is incredibly successful at maintaining a steady building tempo as it works its way to the final climax; like a rollercoaster on the uphill until the vertical drop at the end. The intended structure of the story is very like an operatic tragedy, and those familiar with Greek tragedy will soon cotton on that there won’t ever be a happy ending, and might even be able to work out who checks in to Hades before the end.
At the crux of the film is the theme of fate; its impartiality, its omnipresence, and inevitably its inevitability. Yet, although the driving force of all that unfolds on screen may be fate, it’s disguised as human desire which makes the character studies in the film all the more interesting.
Massimo Poggio is clearly talented in playing tormented Matteo, and while Maria de Medeiros is perfectly cast as devoted mother and wife, Michela Cescon also stands out in filling her feisty role with gusto. Nevertheless, however much he fits the physical billing of Thyaga Alves as a young underwear model, he has a rather lacklustre presence in the theatrical sense.
The script is also a tad uninspiring, and brings trashy soap operas to mind at points. But then there’s the beautiful setting, which slightly make up for it, being so perfectly idyllic with the sparkling waves, and white washed beach houses.
The inclusion of Matteo’s patient as another story in itself adds slight confusion as to whether it runs as a parallel to the main action, or functions to provide development within Matteo’s character. Perhaps it’s a further insightful study of the human psyche which Filiberti uses to flesh out the original material. Nonetheless, maybe a more obvious distinction would have been useful here, as not all viewers will be so psychology savvy to appreciate this extra interlude.
Finally, it will be interesting to see how this film will be interpreted in the moralistic sense. The two main ‘crimes’ subject for debate seem to be committing adultery and perhaps, however unintended, being gay. Unwittingly or not, the film manages to make one worse than the other- after all, Shary’s main dispute with Diego is his lack of ambition, not his numerous affairs. It makes you wonder what the morals of the story are, however overriding the powers of fate claim to be.
David’s Birthday is one for those who like suspense galore, as it doesn’t really let up until the very end. Also, those who like psychological character studies will revel in the anguish and torment had by Matteo. And even fans of tragic drama will find enough raw passion and emphatic displays of European emotional spectacles to fill their hearts content. It is a good story, which is well acted, but there are enough gaps to leave it at average. Perhaps the film adheres too much to the form of traditional tragedy to find enough success as a contemporary film production. MI
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