If you thought The Consequences Of Love was odd and angular, then director Paolo Sorrentino’s sophomore effort might just blow your mind altogether. Boasting one of the most compellingly loathsome protagonists this side of Tom Ripley, The Family Friend fashions a grotesque universe to mirror the diseased condition of his soul. Watch as a naked and overweight lady reaches for balls attached to a ceiling. See the Italian cowboy wannabe go fishing. And so on.
At the centre of the weirdness is Don Geremia de Geremei (Rizzo), a 70-year-old low-rent loan shark who lives with his monstrous ageing mother. His terms are simple – he gives you the cash, you pay him double… or he’ll bury you up to your neck at the beach while his cronies use a shovel to inflict a death known to early enthusiastic Maoists as ‘opening the flower’. The Don insists, however, that he isn’t in it for the money and only has his clients’ best interests at heart. Nauseatingly, he calls them ‘dear-hearts’ and laments the vagaries of existence while lecherously pawing wives and daughters as collateral.
It’s true that he isn’t driven by monetary concerns. In fact, there is little or no evidence of his ill-gotten gains. At home he empties makeshift chamber pots. On the town he wears a filthy jacket teamed with a plastic bag. And he’ll always opt for the item that’s 60 cents cheaper. For Don Geremia, the reward is control. To qualify for a loan, he must know everything about you. He must become your ‘family friend’.
He finally meets his match in Rosalba (Chiatti), the beauty queen daughter of a beleaguered client. When the girl is raped by way of debt repayment on her wedding day, an unsettling obsession begins that she quickly turns to her advantage.
Watching the heightened, sexually depraved antics that ensue, it’s impossible not to think of the Amacord or the Coens at their most perverse. Skewed by the director’s inky black sensibility and flair for bizarre visuals, The Family Friend may well be the most messed up, depraved reworking of Beauty And The Beast ever. Result!