Tommaso: self-Portrait in a minor mode ** 1/2

Tommaso (Willem Dafoe) becomes jealous of his young wife Nikki (Cristina Chiriac).

June 8, 2020 12h14

Tommaso: self-Portrait in a minor mode ** 1/2

Eric Moreault

The Sun

CRITICAL / Tommaso marks another chapter in the fruitful collaboration between Abel Ferrara and Willem Dafoe. The actor is fabulous in the alter ego of the director. But it’s not enough to give a surplus of soul in this self-portrait disjointed and long-winded of an artist tortured, and tormented by his jealousy sickly.

The disappointment is great. Ferrara leads an illustrious career of an independent filmmaker who has often been based on films neo-noir sulphurous (Bad Lieutenant, Our funeral…). He adopts here a tone intimate for a strong narrative little original that it can not renew the discourse.

Tommaso (Dafoe) lives in Rome in the company of his wife Nikki (Cristina Chiriac), 29 years old, and his daughter, Deedee (Anna Ferrara), 3 years, where he wrote the screenplay for his next film.

Sober for the past six years, our man spends his time between his Italian course, its yoga sessions and its meetings to alcoholics anonymous, where his confessions are used to describe his states of mind.

His work is disturbed by his jealousy, to the point where Thomas is imagining things. His insecurity is exacerbated by the detachment of his wife, who neglects her a couple to focus on their daughter. Her self-centeredness of adulescente does not help either.

The two protagonists are coming more and more to parallel lives, where there is the impossibility of communication.

Nothing new in this drama ordinary if it is not that it induces a lot of fiction. Not only it is the fifth collaboration between Dafoe and Ferrara, but his wife and daughter in real life who play these roles with the american actor.

Tommaso: Autoportrait en mode mineur ** 1/2

Anna, the daughter of the director, slips into the skin of Deedee.

Photo By Kino Lorber

However, the film was caught up in some of the pictures and an outdated vision of masculinity. We want to be indulgent, but it did not save Thomas from a certain boredom.

There are great sequences, there is no doubt. A filmmaker of the caliber of Ferrara, always seem to deploy a bit of magic — Thomas was entitled to a presentation in a special screening at the Cannes film Festival 2019. Honestly, we expected much better, especially its Pasolini, the latest fiction by the american director, was 2014.

Tommaso is available on the platform of the Cinema of the Park.