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In this film directed by Abel Ferrara, Shia LaBeouf presents a new edition of the saint, that is, the one who curses a blue sequence.
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By Glenn Kenny
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It’s now June, so the concept of Shia LaBeouf in the role of the name of a fictional biography of the respected and questionable Italian cleric Padre Pio directed by Abel Ferrara is unlikely to be an April Fool joke. It’s a genuine film. And, unfortunately, a rank one.
Now, Ferrara hasn’t even attempted a traditional biopic of the kind who was born as Francesco Forgione in the late nineteenth century and who, by some accounts, began to show stigmas after a few years of training plagued by disease. And that’s to your credit. Rather, he attempted a Brechtian mirror image of the knots of political history and spirituality.
The film is set in Italy between two world wars, in which Pio was a priest in San Giovanni Rotondo, where he spent his entire life. (And where a civilian bloodbath initiated by the fascists took place in 1920; the film ends with a functionality of it. ) Ferrara’s narrative shifts between the cloistered and spiritually tormented lifestyles of Padre Pio and the socialist and fascist factions vying to reshape Italy at the time.
LaBeouf tries a contemporary, let’s say, Pio. And absolutely sinks the image. At the beginning of the film, Pio is interrogated through an interrogator about the “countless” women “with whom you had your narcissistic path”. Who is under surveillance here, the character or LaBeouf himself, who recently faces allegations of sexual abuse by more than one woman?Later, a male character played by Asia Argento confesses to having failed his own daughter, and Pio de LaBeouf, absolutely impassive despite his prodigious beard, tells him to come closer. The film of the Brechtian and installs it firmly in the territory of the “improvisational level workshop that has gone terribly wrong”.
Padre PioRated R for themes, violence, language by Shia LaBeouf. Duration: 1h44. In cinemas.
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