Turkish-Italian director Ferzan Özpetek takes a fresh detour from his distant cinema with stilted characters in his recent ‘Mine vaganti.’ A gay man’s coming out to his family takes us to a small Italian town, to a blood-related family as opposed to closely-knit friends, and Özpetek’s trademark dinner tables
While watching Turkish-Italian director Ferzan Özpetek’s latest hit Mine vaganti (Loose Cannons), I kept thinking of a quote by the avant-garde French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau: “Cinema is about beautiful women in beautiful dresses.” Replace ‘women’ with ‘people,’ and you’ll have the parade of beautiful characters, and the essence of Mine vaganti.
While watching Turkish-Italian director Ferzan Özpetek’s latest hit Mine vaganti (Loose Cannons), I kept thinking of a quote by the avant-garde French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau: “Cinema is about beautiful women in beautiful dresses.” Replace ‘women’ with ‘people,’ and you’ll have the parade of beautiful characters, and the essence of Mine vaganti.
Of course, there’s much more to Özpetek’s latest film than beautiful characters. The characters (some of them not so beautiful, in fact) are created with love, passion, and compassion. A box office success and a favorite with movie critics, the film takes a refreshing detour from Özpetek’s often stilted and distant work in the last decade.
