Taglines: Journey through a wondrous Taviani folk tale.
Fiorile movie storyline. While travelling to visit their grandfather, two children are told the story of a family curse that has lasted two hundred years. During Napoleon’s Italian invasion, Elisabetta Benedetti fell in love with French soldier Jean – but while Jean was distracted, Elisabetta’s brother Corrado stole some gold that Jean was guarding, and set the curse in train. The Benedettis become wealthy, corrupt and hated by their former friends, who rename them the Maledettis – the cursed. The childrens’ grandfather Massimo is the last man to be directly affected by the curse – but will he pass it onto them?
Fiorile is a 1993 Italian drama film about a family curse caused by greed. The film was directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, and stars Claudio Bigagli, Galatea Ranzi, and Michael Vartan. It was entered into the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. The title Fiorile allegedly is derived from the month of Floréal (April–May) in the French Republican Calendar. The film is also known as Wild Flower.
Film Review for Fiorile
In “Fiorile,” Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s sweeping and sensuous fable of how several generations of a Tuscan clan have lived out a family curse, the ghosts of the past are always threatening to jump out at its characters from the shadows of their troubled family history.
The movie, which the New York Film Festival is showing tonight at 9:30 and Saturday at noon, doesn’t exactly believe in ghosts. It is an engaging yarn that suggests how a potent legend handed down from generation to generation can become a kind of determining karmic force field. It also affords the Taviani brothers, whose films are steeped in a love of Italian history and an identification with peasant folklore, rich visual opportunities to evoke a mythical Italian spirit that the sterile trappings of modernity only partially conceal.
In the film’s opening scenes, Luigi Benedetti (Lino Capolicchio) and his French wife (Constanza Engelbrecht) are driving with their two children through the Tuscan countryside to visit the eccentric grandfather the children have never met. To amuse them, Luigi regales them with the details of a family curse that dates back to Napoleon’s invasion of Italy. As the children listen with rapt fascination, they envisage soldiers in 18th-century costume riding through the countryside. And the movie slips effortlessly back two centuries.
In these early flashbacks, which are among the movie’s most beautiful, Jean (Michael Vartan), a handsome, idealistic French lieutenant, falls in love at first sight with Elisabetta Benedetti (Galatea Ranzi), a Tuscan peasant girl whom he nicknames Fiorile. While they are making love in the woods, the girl’s brother Corrado (Claudio Bigagli) steals a regimental chest of gold coins that Jean was guarding. When no one returns them, Jean is executed, according to martial law. And Elisabetta, who is pregnant, vows revenge, never knowing that her family’s greed brought about his death.
With their ill-gotten gains, the Benedettis build an empire to rival the Medicis in scope and opulence, but the stolen wealth carries a curse that ruins the lives of those who live off it. Their bad luck becomes so conspicuous that the Benedettis are nicknamed the Maledettis by the Tuscan locals, and their legend is passed down in whispers.
A century after the original theft, history repeats itself when Fiorile’s wealthy descendant Elisa (Miss Ranzi) is prevented by her politically ambitious brother Alessandro (Mr. Bigagli) from marrying Elio (Giovanni Guidelli), the handsome peasant youth who has impregnated her. Recalling Elisabetta’s vow, Elisa takes revenge by feeding her two brothers poisoned mushrooms while they are traveling to Rome.
The story jumps ahead four decades to World War II. Elisa’s grandson, Massimo (Mr. Vartan), who works with the Italian Resistance, is so intimidated by the family curse that he keeps a mannequin of his French ancestor Jean in his home. When he and his peasant comrades are rounded up by the Fascists, he is the only one spared from execution, because of his wealth and breeding. And in his old age, he becomes a half-mad recluse who is bitterly haunted by the past and whose ancestral home has a funereal atmosphere. The appearance there of the grandchildren who have been transfixed by the family legend stirs old fantasies and terrors. A mushroom dinner takes on sinister overtones, and the children’s game of dress-up becomes confused with a ghostly visitation.
“Fiorile” isn’t an especially deep film, but it offers many pleasures, Shifting deftly between centuries, it combines a confident narrative drive with visual style that drinks in the beauty of the rolling Tuscan landscape. And the smooth, low-key performances by an attractive cast lend each vignette a delicious romantic flavor. By having Miss Ranzi and Mr. Vartan play their characters’ ancestors as well, the continuity is enhanced with a dash of magical realism.
Fiorile – Wild Flower (1993)
Directed by: Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani
Starring: Claudio Bigagli, Galatea Ranzi, Michael Vartan, Lino Capolicchio, Constanze Engelbrecht, Athina Cenci, Norma Martelli, Chiara Caselli, Renato Carpentieri
Screenplay by: Sandro Petraglia, Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani
Production Design by: Gianni Sbarra
Cinematography by: Giuseppe Lanci
Film Editing by: Roberto Perpignani
Costume Design by: Lina Nerli Taviani
Set Decoration by: Luca Gobbi
Music by: Nicola Piovani
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence and nudity.
Distributed by: Fine Line Features
Release Date: May 19, 1993
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