Libera

Three Neapolitan women each tell their own story. Libera runs a newsstand when she is not spying on her work-shy husband with a video camera. Her spying pays off in the end. Carmela lives in cramped accomodation in the old part of Naples. She is harassed by the neighbours' suspiciousness and rumours. One day her son, a homosexual and a heroin addict, shows up. Aurora has married into a nouveau riche family and lives in an ultra-modern skyscraper. When she is once again reunited with her first love she is forced to choose between money and love.
COMMENTARY
Few cities have been so frequently utilised by the Italian film industry as Naples. Maybe the directors are attracted by the fact that it is a city of contrasts, with a balance between high and low, wealth and destitution? Or maybe they are drawn to the place by its visual feast, all the things that the visitors will find exotic; the dark alleys, the sunny piazzas, an orchestra of sounds not to mention noises. All of it surrounded by the classical elements of the city, such as Vesuvius, the sea, the piazza and the billowing washing. Or is it the Neapolitans' love of life and their way of fixing things, 'Tarte dell'arrangiarsi''?
In Paisan Rosellini depicts all of this in a stark and naked manner. In 1963 Francesco Rosi made a harrowing portrayal of a corrupt city in Hands over the City. A couple of years later the Camorra, the local Mafia, is
depicted once again in Illustrious Corpses. In Un complicato intrigo di Donne, Vicoli e delitti, the city is the subject of Lina Wertmuller's feminist excesses. The city forms a backdrop to the melancholy reunion of Marcello Mastroianni and Jack Lemmon after a lifetime that has changed them both, in Scola's Macaroni.
Now it is Pappi Corsicato's turn. His episodic film Libera, also his directing debut, became the highlight of the season in Italy last year as roars of laughter filled the movie theaters. Corsicato moves with confidence in three entirely different surroundings. In Libera, the wife is fed up with her cheating husband and decides to get back at him by exploiting his bedhopping in the porn industry. The story takes place in Secondigliano, a disconsolate suburb of the city. In Aurora we get to know the commercial center of the city, where the skyscrapers have mushroomed during the last couple of years. This is where Aurora remembers her past and the old traditions of the Neapolitan gulf. Carmela is the only part that takes place in the old part of the city, where Sebastiano, the son, is looking for his father who has disappeared inexplicably and without a trace.
The exotic side of Naples is hardly anywhere to be seen in Corsicato's film, but still he does get close to the truth. Really, you can sense both Almodovar, Spain, Madrid or even South America in the film. But why not, the quintessential Naples remains universal. ,~
Peter Loewe