Classic Film Club: 'Dear Diary' (1994)

Each week Tom Huddleston watches a classic film he's never seen before. The rules are simple: each film must be considered a masterpiece and each must be completely new to him. Tom's off this week, so David Jenkins watches: Nanni Moretti's 'Dear Diary'

Nanni Moretti’s ‘Dear Diary’ from 1994 was the first of his films to receive a wide international release. The highly personal, politically scrupulous comedies and dramas of his formative years, films like ‘Ecce bombo’, ‘Bianca’ and ‘Palombella Rossa’, remain out of circulation, perhaps deemed too colloquial for the eyes of a viewing public outside of his native Italy. He has since won a cherished place in the hearts of Europe’s burgeoning community of cinephiles, mainly due to his Palme d’Or winning weepie from 2001, ‘The Son’s Room’ and, to a lesser extent, ‘The Caiman’ (2006) his rambling condemnation of long-time Italian premier, Silvio Berlusconi.

There are brief moments in ‘Dear Diary’ that don’t quite make it across the chasm of time and fashion, where you feel like you’ve gatecrashed a wild pool party but you’re suited in buttoned-down, formal threads. The liberal use of excruciating mid-'90s Italian synthpop and odd jokes and references that (often deliciously cynically) play on Moretti’s own local celebrity can wrongfoot and infuriate the uninitiated. But it's mostly a joy for start to finish, a film which both works perfectly as an entry point into the often seamy domain of world cinema, and as a dense, analytical and acerbic study of Italian mores.

As the title suggests, this highly personal tri-chapter film is used as a kind of cine blot pad for the director’s candid and droll gut-reaction gripes at the minutiae of middle-class, middle-age existence. Moretti, who plays a comically heightened version of himself, comes across as a more passionate and politically inclined Woody Allen, often partial to breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the audience, but as conscious of the flaws in his own character as he is in others.

The first chapter sees the director sashaying around Rome on his scooter, admiring buildings, lamenting his lack of dance aptitude, and having an argument about the nature of whimsicality with ‘Flashdance’ actress Jennifer Beals. Later, he confronts a film reviewer who had espoused the virtues of 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer' and reads him his literary crimes as he weeps upon his deathbed. The comedic tone is muted for section’s superb closing scene, where, to the mournful strains of Keith Jarrett’s ‘Köln Concert’, Moretti rides out to the place where Pasolini was ‘assassinated’, which is now little more than a patch of desolate scrubland. It’s beautifully done, gently purveying a subtle anger at time’s ability to make us to forget our heroes.

The second chapter addresses recent Italian history and the quirks of regionality, as Moretti and an academic friend travel around the Aeolian islands to find some peace and quiet, but are constantly uprooted by noise, accommodation or annoyance at the locals. Philosophical discussions on anthropology and the function of television correspond neatly to the beautifully photographed scenery which offers a visual wink to Rossellini’s ‘Stromboli’ and Antonioni’s ‘L’avventura’.

The final and most penetrating chapter sees the director detail his year visiting dermatologists and healers in trying to discover the source of an annoying itch on his arms and feet. Prescriptions, exercises, acupuncture and burgundy knee-high cotton socks all fail to cure what is eventually diagnosed as Hodgkin's lymphoma. While the mood is more pointedly sullen than the preceding chapters, the rigmarole that Moretti goes through to secure a firm diagnosis is actually shot through with a mordant humour that makes what could have been rather downbeat and depressing, actually instructive and hopeful (especially since we know he survives).

Though the section’s disarming opening scene actually consists of grainy home-movie footage of a discombobulated Moretti receiving chemotherapy in bed, the absurdity and longevity of this process beautifully illustrates the complexity of the human body and our innate desire for self preservation. It’s a moving, shaggy-dog finale, less digressional than the rest of the film, but it works wonderfully both as a study of male anxiety and as a daring, cautionary conclusion to a film which urges us examine life without ceasing to enjoying it.

In 1997, Moretti made 'Aprile' which works as an equally funny, romantic and insightful sister film to 'Dear Diary'. It further expands on an idea (a personal dream, if you will) gestated in this film: making a musical about a Trotskyite pastry chef.

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