It saddens me that Roberto Rossellini’s twin daughters, Ingrid and Isabella, are feuding over Isabella’s tribute to him. Or maybe “feud” isn’t the right word; Ingrid has shared her displeasure with newspapers, and Isabella hasn’t publicly responded.
My Dad Is 100 Years Old is a seventeen-minute short celebrating Roberto Rossellini as filmmaker and father on the hundredth anniversary (May 8) of his birth. In it he’s depicted as nothing more than a big, pudgy belly, which quivers when he speaks (in Isabella’s voice). Isabella plays everyone else in the film—herself, her mom (that is, Ingrid Bergman), Hitchcock, Fellini, Charlie Chaplin, and David O. Selznick. She wrote and narrates it, and enlisted Guy Maddin to direct—a smart choice, because his trademark off-kilter blend of expressionistic earnestness and goofball camp perfectly suits Isabella’s cheeky but affectionate intentions. She presents her father as an idealist in overdrive, a genius who keeps an icepack on his head to cool down his hardworking brain, a neorealist in a world of showmen. His films may be slow, she tells us, but they leave her profoundly moved.
Ingrid Rossellini, who teaches Italian literature at NYU, thinks the film is an insult. She told The New York Sun, “It's a ridiculous thing, this naked belly. I think Father would be very upset to be represented like that.” To her, that the film shows the iconic scene from Open City—Anna Magnani’s character being gunned down—projected on that belly is appalling. And that the film is now being screened on bills with her father’s features at festivals is unthinkable. “I’m surprised that serious people who review these things accepted something like that,” she said. “I would like to hear an explanation.”
My explanation is this: the movie is playful, gorgeous, and loving. There’s no mistaking Isabella’s reverence for her father. Yet when I saw her introduce it the other night at the Tribeca Film Festival, she seemed to be defending it. She said of her parents, “I want them to be loved, and to continue to be loved.” She also warned the audience, “This is a very, very strange film.” Which to me is a polite way of saying, “Yes, my father is played by a bouncy belly that speaks in my voice, and I used to fantasize about suckling him like a pig. Deal with it.” Maybe someday her twin will get the message.
What a grouch, that Ingrid. I so loved the Maddin film.
Posted by: Aaron Hillis | May 05, 2006 at 07:54 PM
I can sort of see both points. Isabella is entitled to make a very, very strange film about people she obviously loved and knew very well. On the other hand, I would be very, very irked to see the most indelible, tragic scene my father ever shot projected onto a belly.
Let's hope they get drunk together at Christmas and let bygones be bygones.
Posted by: Campaspe | May 08, 2006 at 08:37 PM