Matteo Garrone makes organised crime frightening by attending to ordinary work, and brings the same patience to people trying to escape hardship. We rate him highly, though crowded storytelling and an urge to be kind sometimes weaken his films.
Fi1m perspective
In Gomorrah (2008), Salvatore Cantalupo's tailor Pasquale makes us want to stay with him when the film moves elsewhere. Garrone gives his work importance in a crime film that also finds room for fashion and toxic waste disposal. He understands how frightening ordinary business can become when danger is not confined to an obviously sinister building. Production designer Paolo Bonfini helps by making the locations feel inhabited, rather than prepared for criminal activity.
That interest in people living at the margins was there in his early work on immigration in Rome, including Terra di mezzo (1997). Gomorrah brought his international breakthrough, but he did not settle into making crime films. The realist dramas Reality (2012) and Dogman (2018) alternate with the fairy tales Tale of Tales (2015) and Pinocchio (2019).
The difficulty in Gomorrah is keeping track of everyone. Marco Spoletini's editing must move among five stories, and the joins sometimes leave us reorientating ourselves instead of understanding how the Camorra works. Clearer background would help more than another demonstration of cruelty. But Garrone's largely non-professional cast makes the daily routines convincing, with nobody appearing to wait for a big scene.
The single journey in Io Capitano (2023) gives him a clearer story to follow. Built from the accounts of people who made the journey, it stays with Senegalese teenagers Seydou and Moussa as they leave Dakar for Europe. Dimitri Capuani's production design gives the family a courtyard house that is never empty, so departure means leaving company behind. We were horrified when Garrone kept the violence outside the frame and held on Seydou Sarr's face, letting the sound carry it.
The problem is that Garrone grows too kind to this boy, and Io Capitano loses some of the force its earlier passages earned. It remains worth the evening for Sarr, whose performance never asks us to like him. For Garrone at his least forgiving, choose Gomorrah, and give its five stories your full attention.
Biography
Matteo Garrone (born 15 October 1968) is an Italian film director, screenwriter and producer. Born in Rome, he is the son of theatre critic Nico Garrone and photographer Donatella Rimoldi, and a graduate of Liceo Artistico Ripetta. He began his career with short films and won the Sacher d'Oro award in 1996 for Silhouette, which formed part of his first feature Terra di Mezzo (1997).
Garrone is known for Gomorrah (2008), Reality (2012), Tale of Tales (2015), Dogman (2018), Pinocchio (2019) and Io Capitano (2023). He directed, wrote and produced the latter, which competed at the Venice Film Festival, where he won the Silver Lion for Best Director. The film also received David di Donatello awards for Best Film and Best Director, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. His earlier work includes multiple David di Donatello and European Film Awards.
