MIFF NOTES: Lost and Beautiful (2015, Dir. Pietro Marcello)

I'm always intrigued by how documentary filmmakers are driven by their subjects. How in the process of making a films, life can suddenly take everything in a whole other direction. Life can be capricious. A twist of fate can turn a run-of-the-mill documentary into a once-in-a-lifetime exposé, or it can have the whole thing fall apart in a moment.

Pietro Macello's Lost and Beautiful, which initially centred on the work of Tommaso Cestrone, a local shepherd who'd taken it upon himself to restore the grounds of an abandoned 18th-century palace, arrived at such a crossroad. Half way through the production, Cestrone passed away. Whatever Macello was intending to present became a whole other beast, one which expanded to focus not only on the work of Cestrone but also on the philosophical musings his foundling buffalo calf, Sarchiapone. To tie what was and what became together, Macello reaches into Italian commedia dell'arte. Pulcinella (played by a masked Sergio Vitolo) descends on the events to give voice to Cestrone’s story, then to carry out his last wishes.

Straddling documentary realism and folkloric flourish, Lost and Beautiful brings to mind Miguel Gomes’ Arabian Nights, only without that film’s ambitious scope. The bedraggled components are well stitched together though and the images are easy to sink into. The de-romanticised Campania countryside and its salt of the earth inhabitants, human and beast, provide a special brand of nourishment.

I'd be interested to see where Macello was intending to take his original film; the inklings of social unrest around the government and the Camorra piqued particular interest. But it is not to be. Which is, in itself, an extra-textual comment on our undeniable impermanence.

★★★

Trailer:

Lost and Beautiful screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.