Mandico brings an invented Cinecittà to Locarno, with Marion Cotillard

Watching a Bertrand Mandico film in a cinema means following two things at once: what happens on screen and what happens between the seats, where some people comment in indignation and others leave before the end. It happened in Locarno two years ago with the experimental «Dragon Dilatation». It happened again this year with «Roma elastica», screened out of competition, although this time the reactions come more from a passion for a certain kind of cinema than from discomfort at the images.

The film is a film about the making of a film, and at the same time a homage to one era of Cinecittà. The year is 1982. Eddie Mars, a fading star who is terminally ill, arrives in Rome with her make-up artist Valentina to shoot what will in all likelihood be her last picture: an erotic, cannibalistic peplum, and according to the producers a feminist one too, set in a distant future called 2026, where ecologists clash with neofascists and people move around inside disposable funnels called YouTube. As expected, the crew gradually becomes more disturbing than the science fiction it is staging.

Shot on 35mm film, «Roma elastica» piles up references: Fellini, Lucio Fulci’s splatter, Mario Bava, Antonioni’s failure to communicate quoted as a posture. Mandico’s Cinecittà, however, never existed: it is a reconstructed and largely invented memory. That is where the real obstacle lies for viewers, more than in the bodily fluids and the sex scenes. Those references are the film’s skeleton. Without that shared passion, what remains is an hour and forty-five minutes of curious, meaningless images. Perhaps that is a pity: the clash between ecologists and neofascists, and the game of a 2026 imagining 1982 imagining 2026, offered a possible social reading that interests the director only in part.

The film’s strength lies in Marion Cotillard’s performance, perfect in the role of a diva who knows death is near, keeps acting and turns her B-movie into a nihilistic testament. Beside her, Noémie Merlant is convincing as Eddie Mars’ personal make-up artist. At Cannes, Mandico said that actresses are the martyrs of the film industry. «Roma elastica» remains a film for those who love this kind of cinema.