MOVIE REVIEW : Brusati’s ‘Uncle’ Not Sleazy Enough

In “The Sleazy Uncle” (at the Monica 4-Plex), Vittorio Gassman plays a character in the same line as Alec Guinness’ reckless, indigent painter Gully Jimson in “The Horses’ Mouth” and Tom Conti’s alcoholic writer in “Reuben, Reuben”: the artist as binger, the poet in decay.

Gassman’s threadbare rake, Uncle Luca, spends part of his day on brilliant but non-lucrative poetry and the rest in a ramble of lechery and self-indulgence. Like Gully, he’s a compulsive hellion whose flower of genius droops toward rot. The first time we see him, he’s trying to pick up women in a movie house, sliding next to them in the dark and getting chased outside by angry rowdies.

Gassman’s Luca is sick and old, but still trying to rekindle the fires of what must have been a doozy of a misspent youth. In the film, writer-director Franco Brusati (“Bread and Chocolate”) contrasts him with nephew Ricardo (Giancarlo Giannini), his opposite number: wealthy and a bit repressed.

It seems a doomed relationship. Ricardo introduces Luca to his potential mistress (Stefania Sandrelli) and Luca seduces her. Ricardo straightens up Luca’s garret, and Luca responds by setting the place on fire--after carefully piling all his books by the stairwell. Ricardo invites him to his mansion, and Luca tries to pick up women by passing around his blood tests--before taking off with a valuable painting. Ricardo was born for order, privilege: Luca was born to burn.

There’s a great tradition of Italian movie comedy--the genre of Pietro Germi, Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi, Ettore Scola, Lina Wertmuller and the younger Fellini--to which this movie obviously aspires but doesn’t reach. Perhaps Brusati, a five-time winner of the Italian Dramatic Institute’s comedy award, conceived Luca’s role too clearly as a star turn, forgave him his sins too early.

Gassman is often best playing big, expansive, charismatic characters. He was the Italian stage Stanley Kowalski in the version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” directed by Luchino Visconti, and it’s easy to believe he was Brando’s near equal. With his athlete’s physique and wolfish grin, Gassman can gobble up whole scenes, whole movies.

But, at first, Luca doesn’t burn with enough wayward brilliance. He seems hemmed in, pinched, peering around with furtive, ratty expressions.

Then, toward the end, he has a great scene: a series of interconnected dialogues at a trial. Leaning wearily in the dock, answering the judge, caught in tight, fixed close-ups that keep fading to black, Gassman’s Luca is the con man stripped of his masks, vaguely trying to brazen things out while his world collapses. It’s a chilling, sad, wonderful sequence--though it can’t quite sustain the movie through a too-sentimental seaside reconciliation climax.

A pity. If Brusati’s uncle had been really sleazy and wild, really carried this movie over the edge, the lyricism might have blossomed. And “The Sleazy Uncle” (Times-rated Mature for language, sexual situations) would have been worthy of all the mad, seductive, decaying poets Brusati wants to celebrate.

‘The Sleazy Uncle’

Vittorio Gassman Luca

Giancarlo Giannini Ricardo

Andrea Ferreol Teresa

Stefania Sandrelli Isabella

A Castle Hill presentation of a Quartet Films Inc. release. Director Franco Brusati. Producers Lao Pescarolo, Guido De Laurentiis. Executive producer Enzo Doria. Screenplay by Leo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Brusati. Cinematographer Romano Albani. Editor Gianfranco Amicucci. Costumes Paola Marchesin. Music Stefano Marcucci. Production design Dante Ferretti. Set designer Francesca Lo Schiavo. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature (language, sexual situations).