Review - China Is Near (1967)

Marco Bellocchio's second film, the follow-up to his wholly original dysfunctional family tale 'Fists in the Pocket,' is another polemic against the provincial Italian bourgeois society the director obviously knows so well. More political in nature than his first effort (and far more comedic in tone), it concerns three siblings of aristocratic lineage who dwell in a stuffy mansion filled with leather-bound books, moth-eaten finery and at least one tribute bestowed by a deceased Pope. The eldest brother Vittorio (portrayed with magnificent bluster by Glauco Mauri) is the picture of effete, impotent intellectualism, inanely spouting verse to dazzle his secretary Giovanna, then pathetically pawing at her when she ignores his advances. Sister Elena (to the mortification of Vittorio) mainly busies herself by bedding men from town then refusing to marry any of them for fear of losing her elite status, while youngest brother Camillo is a Catholic church acolyte by day and a Maoist radical by night. Because of his patina of respectability, the utterly unqualified Vittorio is chosen to run for office as the head of the local Socialist chapter, exasperating party hopeful Carlo, who happens to be Giovanna's lover, and who is hired by the candidate to help orchestrate his campaign. The working-class couple are corrupted, gradually transforming into conniving social climbers and pairing off with the brother and sister with designs to marry into their wealth. Meanwhile, the overzealous Camillo does everything he can to disrupt his brother's election efforts, going as far as to sic a pack of dogs on him as he delivers a speech, and planting a bomb in the Socialists' headquarters.

Of a pair with Bernardo Bertolucci's 'Before the Revolution,' another study of conflicted Italian bourgeoisie in the years leading up to the upheavals of 1968, Bellocchio's sardonic satire is patently autobiographical, drawing on the filmmaker's rural upbringing and leftist affiliations. Also, like Bertolucci's film it's less concerned with the resolution of the plot than with the novelistic recreation of a stifling milieu, filled with empty societal rituals, religious ineptitude, sexual frustration and an overhanging pall of political unrest that implicates members of every class, and forces them into conflict. The loose, episodic narrative is tiresome for stretches as one waits for familial intrigues to unfold, but several farcical scenes keep it going, almost all of which center on Vittorio; he harangues his pious old aunts at dinner for not voting for him, is fallen upon and beaten by toothless proletariat at his first public appearance, and gleefully bounces a ball like a child. There's also the bumbling exploits of Camillo and his sorry communist cell, whose immature ideologies, absurd seriousness and petty vandalisms (painting the film's title on a wall) recall Godard's 'La Chinoise' in small, subplot scale. Visually, Bellocchio retains the uncontrived look of his debut, to which cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli adds an appropriately decadent sheen. Composer Ennio Morricone contributes a brisk, almost martial theme.