Visual Artists Flounder In Search of a Movie

Do you want to know the problem with the new Italian-language film, “Arsa”? The men at the helm, Nicolò Massazza and Iacopo Bedogni, aren’t filmmakers; they’re visual artists. Working under the moniker “MASBEDO”— all caps, if you please — Messrs. Massazza and Bedogni are interdisciplinarians who describe themselves as “prominent protagonists of visual art and moving-image research.” They’ve exhibited in museums and galleries located in Russia, Switzerland, Poland, China, Israel and, albeit just barely, the United States.“Arsa” will be the first time most Americans encounter MASBEDO and their mission to explore “the relationship between cinema and art as a privileged area of research.” How this dynamic is “privileged” isn’t made clear. Perhaps the signori are happy to be doing whatever it is that they do. Given the art-speak with which they surround themselves — talk of intersections, hybridity, paradigms, and such — “Arsa” sounds like it might be the most conventional of their projects. It’s a 90-minute coming of age story, a meditation on isolation, disappointment and independence.A disinterested moviegoer could ask what the problem with something like that might be and, truth to tell, “Arsa” isn’t bad at all. Though MASBEDO’s venture is arthouse bound, it is by no means forbidding or experimental in means nor is the story provocative or obtuse. The directors, who wrote the screenplay with novelist Giorgio Vasta from a story on which producer Beatrice Bordone Bulgari pitched in, opt for a lyrical tone that isn’t afraid to trade on the comforts of nostalgia. The results are remarkably kind.The events that play out in “Arsa” have their basis in pain. Our title heroine, portrayed by 22-year old Gala Zohar Martinucci, lives alone on an unnamed island. She spends the days wandering its shores, picking up the detritus left behind by groups of tourists who presumably visit the surroundings for its natural beauty. They can’t be there for the amenities. Arsa’s island is close to being deserted. A nearby hotel has seen better days, playing host to twentysomethings vacationing on the cheap. We see children, too, playing on the beach.Parents and, in particular, fathers are notable for their absence. Through a series of flashbacks, we get to know Arsa’s father (Lino Musella), a sculptor whose day job is making decorative statues for a contractor who insists on “pretend beauty” for his wealthy know-nothing clients. The young Arsa (Matilde Schiaretta) spends the days in her father’s studio, registering his frustrations even as she gleans from him the transformative possibilities of creativity. As an adult, Arsa cobbles together figurines assembled from action figures and dolls found on her daily rounds. Dad has since gone on to his great reward.A level of mysticism attends to “Arsa” and is most fully embodied in the island’s distinctive and sometimes labyrinthine landscape. Myth and monsters weigh heavily on the shoulders of the young Arsa and her single dad. As for the older Arsa, she steers clear of men. When a trio of gangly dudes arrive on the island, she’s both troubled and intrigued by the attentions of Andrea (Jacopo Olmo Antinori), another child who has lost a father. At one point, a scuba-diving Andrea rescues Arsa from the ocean depths by what may or may not have been a suicide attempt. A kiss is broached, a slap is doled out in response, and an abiding air of despondence is maintained.So what is off with an otherwise commendable picture? As counterintuitive as it may seem to complain about beauty, it becomes a problem when the artful manner of the blocking slackens the momentum necessary to sustain a compelling fiction. Granted, Gherardo Gossi’s cinematography is resplendent, but “Arsa” meanders to such an extent that its poetic leanings are rendered diffuse and made portentous. Messrs. Massazza and Bedogni have a knack for composition that is better suited to a static medium like photography than a moving medium like cinema.A complaint sometimes levied against interdisciplinary artists is that they are jacks of all trades and masters of none. It’s an unfair slight for the braintrust that is MASBEDO, but it does underline why “Arsa” is content to let our attentions drift.

Visual Artists Flounder In Search of a Movie

Visual Artists Flounder In Search of a Movie

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