Organized crime in Italy has always been a renewable source of violent drama and horror stories for movies and television, with the emphasis gradually shifting from the Sicilian Mafia that inspired Coppola’s Godfather to the currently more fearsome Neapolitan Camorra powering the Gomorrah series. But just a bit farther south in Calabria lies an even more ruthless organization known as the ‘Ndrangheta, which is the subject of Francesco Costabile’s stark and chilling debut feature, Una Femmina – The Code of Silence. Bowing in the Berlin Panorama, it was one of the more accessible and audience-friendly offerings on view and is already in theaters in Italy.
The story has a familiar ring, having been cobbled from co-screenwriter Lirio Abbate’s book about real Calabrian women who rebelled against the patriarchal traditions that keep females (“femmine”) in a lifelong subservient position to men. The title Una Femmina – The Code of Silence also references an imperative need to keep everything in the family, from drug smuggling to murder and little accidents that happen from time to time. Real women who have broken this code and talked to the police, turning state’s evidence, have put themselves in enormous danger of reprisal. So from the first moment the chiseled face of newcomer Lina Siciliano appears on screen with her look of determination, the audience can fill in a lot of the plot by themselves.
Siciliano makes a rather remarkable debut here playing the film’s rebel, Rosa. (She has the same name as Claudia Cardinale’s angry widow who confronts an entire table of ruthless bosses in the 1968 The Day of the Owl, still one of the best early Mafia films.) As a small child, Rosa glimpsed her mother lying on the floor, being murdered by her uncle Tore while her grandmother Berta looked on in horror. Later in the film, Rosa is told her mother was forced to drink acid, a symbolic death for a woman who has “talked too much.”
This opening scene is filmed as a child’s uncertain memory, with half the screen out of focus, the other half hyper-sharp – a disconcerting technique that thankfully is limited to this scene. But the cinematography by DP Giuseppe Maio continues to draw attention to itself, in a positive way, throughout the film for the potent atmosphere of evil, uncompromising darkness that envelopes the characters, the ragged bleak beauty of the rural landscape thick with forested mountains, the grotesque faces and bodies of the townsfolk that bare their ugly souls.
Rosa is indeed something of a flower in the midst of these animals. Her face has the sharply etched, classic lines made for Greek tragedy, which is the model for most mafia films (Costabile even brings in a Greek chorus of black-veiled women at one point). Several incidents trigger her growing hostility towards the family who, in addition to uncle Tore, his wife and granny Berta, includes her cackling, half-mad cousin Natale (Luca Massaro). One factor is her undisguised interest in Gianni (Mario Russo), the town’s young gravedigger; the other is her discovery that Uncle Tore has struck out on his own as a drug smuggler, reigniting the rivalry between their clan (poor and unsuccessful, to judge by the squalor they’re living in) and a winning clan headed by the cruel-faced Ciccio (Vincenzo Di Rosa), who lives in a rich don’s tasteless manse.
Costabile and his production designers Erika Aversa and Gianluca Salamone capture the limited possibilities of the town, where the narrow curving streets echo the aisles between tall walls of tombs in the town cemetery. This is where Gianni and Rosa meet and vaguely plan a better life elsewhere, until Rosa fearlessly (and quite recklessly) takes justice into her own hands and the situation precipitates.
Though full of characters and incident, the pace is not swift and the film labors to hold the attention for its two-hour running time. There are some scenes that seem tacked on, like the near-death of an African sex worker who has apparently been attacked by Natale. She never reappears in the film and the whole sordid scene has no repercussions. If the point is to show Natale is a homicidal maniac, it is redundant. We gleaned that much from his wild motorbike ride which ended in grave robbery and torching a corpse. And what about the lascivious looks he casts at cousin Rosa, also left dangling?
The dark-haired, dark-eyed Lina Siciliano is excellent in the main role, her evil princess looks and icy stares leaving a doubt about what side she’s really on. The cast is well served by veteran stage performers like Fabrizio Ferracane as the sinister uncle (he appears in a very different role as a professor in Paolo Taviani’s Addio Leonora) and the highly effective Anna Maria De Luca as the witchy grandmother, whose bid to take over the reins of the family Ma Barker-style is brushed aside by the unhinged Natale on the grounds she is a mere femmina. Both will receive their gruesome karmic reward in the end.
The score by Valerio Camporini F. is worth a nod – filled with tarantellas and local folk sounds in its lighter moments, it switches to skin-crawling, throbbing horror in the multiple vendetta scenes.
Director: Francesco Costabile
Screenplay: Lirio Abbate, Serena Brugnolo, Adriano Chiarelli, Francesco Costabile, based on Abbate’s book
Cast: Lina Siciliano, Fabrizio Ferracane, Anna Maria De Luca, Simona Malato, Vincenzo Di Rosa, Luca Massaro, Mario Russo, Francesca Ritrovato
Producers: Attilio De Razza, Pierpaolo Verga, Nicola Picone, Edoardo De Angelis
Executive producer: Marco Fagnocchi
Cinematography: Giuseppe Maio
Production design: Erika Aversa, Gianluca Salamone
Costume design: Luca Costigliolo
Editing: Stefano Mariotti
Music: Valerio Camporini F.
Sound: Sandro Rossi
Production companies: Tramp Ltd. (Italy), O’Groove (Italy) in association with Prime Video, Medusa
World sales: Intramovies
Venue: Berlin International Film Festival (Panorama)
In Italian, Calabrian dialect
120 minutes
