Caro Diario (Film Movement Classics)
Italian director Nanni Moretti stars in the comedy Caro Diario (Dear Diary), a 1994 award-winner at Cannes reissued on Blu-ray with a thoughtful booklet essay, a deleted scene and a making-of short. It was one of that year’s best films from anywhere in the world, a comedy that managed the rare balancing act of being smart as well as smart-alecky.
Often filmed in elegant long takes, Caro Diario follows Moretti as he rides his Vespa around Rome, eschewing the Colosseum and other tourist destinations for the urban neighborhoods and leafy suburbs where Romans actually live. It’s a tour of the Eternal City with wry asides at every turn, delivered in ironic voiceovers, before Moretti lights out to the islands. Light comedy turns into whimsical, then pointed satire before shading into melancholy. Some of the humor involves Moretti’s interactions with strangers who assume, as Jennifer Beale (playing herself) comments, that he’s “a little off.”
Many social and intellectual tendencies are spoofed. Above all, Caro Diario is a cineaste’s movie with many movie references. Moretti directs some of his sharpest remarks at a contemporary film much beloved by pretentious twits, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. In one fantasy scene, he torments a film critic who praised Henry by forcing him to listen to his own train-wreck of prose. All these years later, Caro Diario remains an absolute delight.
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