LA SANTA

Four men arrive in the small southern Italian village of Nebula for the annual procession dedicated to the town's patron saint, Santa Vittoria. But the four have a precise plan: wait for the village to fall asleep and, at dawn, sneak into the church and steal the statue of the Saint, which seems to have an inestimable value. Everything seems to go according to plan: the theft is accomplished and no one had to use violence; but as soon as the priest raises the alarm, the entire village mobilizes. With all escape routes from Nebula closed, the villagers, armed with rifles and makeshift weapons, begin a bloody manhunt to recover the statue and punish those who have dishonored it. In his second work after "At the End of the Day – A Day Without End," Cosimo Alemà remains in the vein with which he seems to have a particular appeal, namely the survival thriller. Indeed, "La Santa" is the story of a small number of people hunted by others who simply want to massacre them, in the worst possible way. Said like this, it might seem like just another film, a child of "The Most Dangerous Prey" (book) and "The Dangerous Game" (film), but Alemà has personality and if "At the End of the Day" had a nervous style and made the game of simulated war a distinctive trait, "La Santa" is even more characteristic and the typical playful mechanism that pits cat against mouse takes on a completely unprecedented exception. A particular feature of "La Santa", especially when compared to the director's previous film, is the Italianness, but an Italianness that is not at all a limiting trait, but rather a decisive point of advantage. The "crime" element as shown in this film is typical of those who have American or non-Italian films in mind: four makeshift or low-level criminals (only one of them has been in prison) driven to crime by necessity, poor devils, inexperienced and resentful towards society, who are desperately seeking a second chance at success. In some respects, the opening of "La Santa" reminds one of Alex de la Iglesia's last film, "Witching and Bitching – Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi," but this trope of predators becoming prey is used here with inventiveness, since everything is inserted into the Italian anthropological dimension. A small rural extraction village, moreover in the South – which seems to have always been infinitely more fascinating for cinema - with customs and traditions that include processions and religious recurrences that inevitably turn into fanaticism. But this last aspect is minimized; we do not know what lies behind the cult of Santa Vittoria, probably nothing strange, and everything is conducted as a matter of possession. The theft of the Santa is not seen so much as a violation of a relic, but as the taking possession of something dear, almost a negation of their own identity. What is staged in "La Santa" is not dissimilar to a burglary in a home where a fundamental family memory is stolen. It is not the economic value in itself that is important, but the affective, identity value. What nevertheless interests Alemà and his co-screenwriter Riccardo Brun is the manhunt in its most schematic and direct representation: anyone can improvise as a hunter, from the redneck armed with a rifle to the housewife armed with a stick or a child armed with stones. As already happened in "At the End of the Day," Alemà does not spare us some cruelty and if the children instructed in target practice with humans are the pinnacle, one still manages to breathe an overall quite unhealthy atmosphere. Sometimes there is a drop in style, like the scene in the church with the girls, which seems too fake, or the embrace between the doctor and the fat woman, which adds a grotesque moment that was not needed, but overall "La Santa" works very well. "At the End of the Day" was a step higher also because one can sense a greater richness in the packaging, but this second film is also a success for Alemà. Presented out of competition at the 2013 edition of the Rome International Film Festival. "La Santa" was distributed directly on home video by 01 Distribution only in DVD edition. The video is clear and well rendered even in the dark scenes, a point in favor considering that the film was shot in RED technology, while the mono audio is a bit low in some places. Among the extras, a trailer and a short special made by Rai Cinema Channel on the occasion of the red carpet during the Rome Festival.