MOVIE REVIEW : Film-Fest Shenanigans in ‘Screenings’

Anyone who has ever attended or participated in a film festival should experience smiles and chuckles of recognition upon seeing the sly, sharply observant Italian comedy “Private Screenings,” which opens today at the Monica 4-Plex with, aptly enough, a private screening sponsored by That’s Sicily, a tourism organization which is distributing the film. (Regular runs start Saturday.)

“Private Screenings” is the work of three young filmmakers, Ninni Bruschetta, Francesco Calogero and Donald Ranvaud, who really know the chaotic film-festival territory. They don’t miss a thing: temperamental stars, prints that don’t arrive, snooty discos that cash in on the festival, fatuous press conferences, pretentious directors, pushy critics, self-important festival officials, aggressive paparazzi, sexual shenanigans, and the constant babble of many languages.

Apparently, the filmmakers (all of whom do double duty as actors) shot a good deal of their footage while a recent edition of the Taormina Film Festival was in progress. (There are cameos by Cyd Charisse, a gracious festival honoree, director Bob Swaim and producer Chris Sievernich).

Amid a thicket of characters and subplots two young waiters, Carlo (Bruschetta) and Ettore (Antonio Caldarella), emerge as the film’s central figures when they’re seduced into signing on as festival gofers with promises of glamour and excitement. The film opens, not at the beautiful, cliffhanging village of Taormina, but on the Portuguese coast, where an arty new screen version of Goethe’s “Faust” is shooting. A starlet (Jessica Forde) appearing in it leaves for Taormina where she has the promise of a job from a fat, sleazy producer named Petronius (Peter Berling).

Fortunately, “Private Screenings” (Times-rated Mature for complex narrative, adult themes) is sufficiently amusing to overcome a poor 16mm print with even worse sound. The filmmakers shoot from the hip, pile on the complications and keep things moving briskly. For all their satire, they nevertheless love and revere the cinema, as an homage to Fassbinder, via some clips from “Veronika Voss,” suggests.