The Dinner

Scandalous, brutal and real, Ivano de Matteo’s 2014 adaptation of Herman Koch’s The Dinner is an Italian masquerade rife with secrets and malice, and is now showing as part of the Lavazza Italian Film Festival.

The Dinner revolves around the households of two brothers, Paolo (Luigi Lo Cascio) and Massimo (Alessandro Gassman). The two disdain each other, but the two are forced to make a decision together that will determine the fate of their children. Paolo’s son Michele and Massimo’s daughter Benedetta have killed a homeless woman while walking home drunk from a party one night. The question is, will their parents report them, or will they do everything in their power to ensure the matter stays hidden?

This film isn’t a hero’s tale. No character is inherently likeable, and if they appear to be at one stage, they will reveal themselves as a traitor or a spineless wretch at another. This is the beauty of The Dinner – it feasts on how unsettling it is to be human. Koch wrote his characters with disturbing depth – depth which could not be shown better through the performances of Lo Cascio, turning Paulo into a character likened to Hamlet, and Gassman, whose relationship with his brother is a burning fuse that you can see and smell but are too entranced to touch. The two wives Clara (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) and Giovanna (Lidia Vitale) are just as fiery – the relationship between Paulo and Clara especially chilling as they sway like a pendulum back-and-forth between light-heartedness and malice.

It’s no wonder that Matteo was nominated for the David Di Donatello Awards this year, with his acute understanding of the author’s intention, and his ingenuity in realising it through film. Matteo knew that in order to stay true to the essence of Koch’s novel, the impact of the story must be built through the depth of the acting – through what isn’t said. This is what makes Matteo’s adaptation of The Dinner far superior to its Dutch predecessor, Het Diner (2013), which abuses asides as much as a Shakespearean play, with half the mastery. On top of this, Het Diner’s constant voiceovers spoon-feed the audience so much that Paul’s ‘inner voice’ becomes an intrusion only to be likened to that of Bladerunner‘s first release, before the director’s cut swooped in and saved the day a decade later. Similarly, The Dinner is the redeemer that makes brilliant what was originally intended to be brilliant.

I have to admit though, the 2013 adaptation was far easier to follow. Matteo’s Dinner offers no context, and introduces a crowd of protagonists in the first ten minutes of the film. Upon first watching it, I nearly found myself scrawling a family tree on the back of my notepad for fear that I’d mistake a son for a nephew or a cousin for a boyfriend – a mistake that near led me to assumptions that, if realised, would skyrocket the rating of the film. I almost lost the plot a few times there. Only towards the end of the film I was comfortable with who’s who, and even then a few characters dropped off the globe, only coming back through a mention in a conversation.

It’s the end that’s unforgiveable, though. After all the investment, all the emotion, all the frustration you’ve just been put through, the end strikes such rage that, as the credits flash up and you roar your dissatisfaction at the screen, you feel for a moment exactly what these characters felt. That, in its essence, is the point of cinema. That is what makes this film such an unsettling success. If you’re looking for a movie that you can kick back to between a conversation and a drink, Het Diner should come cheap these days. However, if you’re looking to be raptured the way cinema is supposed to rapture you, you now know where to look. Though, don’t say I didn’t warn you, this Dinner isn’t easy to digest.

8/10

The Dinner
Wednesday September 16 – Sunday October 11
italianfilmfestival.com.au/films/the-dinner