Edward Hendriks
After a warm week it was now gray outside and it was raining. We watched the mafia film in an almost empty hall of City Cinema Rembrandt in Arnhem Suburra. It is grey, raining or dark for almost the entire film. The atmosphere is set. Suburra shows Rome in all its ugliness, as the counterpart of La Grande Bellezza.
Suburra is the latest project from director Stefano Sollima, who you may know from the acclaimed series Criminale Romance en Gomorrah the series. In Suburra it is again about corruption and violence. The setting this time is the capital della mafia, or the city of Rome.
That, of course, is reason enough to bring in representatives of the church, the government, rival gangs and gypsies. Both the upper and the underworld appear to have interests in a megalomaniac real estate project on the coast. A mob boss nicknamed Samurai (Claudio Amendola) wants to recreate Italy's Las Vegas here, and needs the help of politicians, the Vatican bank and local mafiosi.
The Pope Stops
The film opens in the Vatican at the end of 2011, with the Pope informing a cardinal that he wants to stop. The prelate no longer sees any good in it. Then the countdown to 'the apocolypse' takes place in a week. In seven days we see a world in decline, corrupt and sick to the bone.
Filippo Malgradi (played by Pierfrancesco Favino) is a Member of Parliament who is deeply involved in dubious real estate plans. His problems only get worse when during a wild night of sex and drugs with two hookers, one of the two - an underage girl - dies of an overdose.
When he abandons the other prostitute with her friend's body, she enlists Spadino's help. An abusive friend from a gypsy family who helps the hooker make her friend's body disappear into the Tiber. But he also sees an opportunity in the incident to extort the MP. When Malgradi then calls in the violent Numero 8 (Alessandro Borghi) to 'scare' Spadino, a second person is killed.
Spiral of violence
Meanwhile, the corporate Samurai does his best to arrange everything through corrupt middlemen. But when rival mob boss Anacleti (Adamo Dionisi) joins the fray, the project collapses like a house of cards, dragging everyone involved into a spiral of violence.
Sollima late in Suburra showing that he has the skills to make characters and plotlines come together smoothly. And that's great, because there's a lot that happens in those seven days. That much, that Netflix does see a spin-off series in it. You can reportedly watch the first season as early as 2017.
Stylistically strong
Suburra is cinematographically and stylistically strong. Despite all the ugliness shown, what we see is visually and narratively impressive. The architecture of the city of Rome has a prominent role in the story, as does the light. The bombastic soundtrack of M83 does the rest.
With Suburra it is clear that Stefano Sollima has established his name as the king of the new-realistic Italian mafia film. I look forward to his next projects!
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