5th Cinecittà Italian Doc Fest: I Want Her Dead

Writers: Gianluca Matarrese and Nico Morabito

Director: Gianluca Matarrese 

It’s hard to know exactly what you’re watching in Gianluca Matarrese’s I Want Her Dead (Il quieto vivo). He bills it as a documentary and the characters in the film all play themselves. But IDMB calls it a ‘tale’ which blends ‘reality and fiction, farce and tragedy.’

It’s set in Contrada Viscigliette, a tiny place in Calabria, home to just 70 residents, all of whom, as we are told, are related to one another. The focus is on two sisters-in-law, who live one above the other in a two-storey apartment building. Upstairs is Luisa Magno aged 54 (“though I look younger”), living on her own since her divorce. She claims she has no money for repairs – water seepage from her flat is one of the many bones of contention between her and Imma. She has some sort of online business – we see recording herself promoting some sort of weight-loss products.

Downstairs is Imma Capalbo with her husband, Luisa’s brother, and their two children. Nearby there’s a little gang of elderly aunts, all Magnos, who get together to cook the sort of meals you’d expect of an extended Italian family. They are cheery, sensible folk, but part of their role in the film is to represent the chorus of a Greek tragedy. We know this because the film begins with a quote from Sophocles’ Antigone about there being nothing worse that a divided family. The aunts then appear in highly stylised opening scene in some windswept ruin where they oversee an arranged encounter between Luisa and Imma.

Luisa and Imma are there to settle differences, but they go at each other hammer and tongs, screeching insults like fishwives. Each has dressed up for the encounter, fully made up and in high heels. Luisa favours leopardskin prints, Imma is more toned down in black. Is this code for whose side we should take?

The cinematography here and elsewhere by Kevin Brunet is striking and there’s some atmospheric original music by Cantautoma.

We might reasonably expect to return to this scene. But – spoiler alert – we don’t.

As a comic opening, it’s entertaining enough. But the unbridled yelling continues at regular intervals throughout the film. Not all viewers may find this funny.There’s no voice over, but early on a caption tells us ‘This isn’t just any family. It’s my family’. Who is this invisible narrator? Another spoiler alert – we’re never told. Is it the young boy present in several scenes, appearing to enjoy the litigious encounters between Luisa and Imma? Chissà? as they say in Italy.

The causes of friction are certainly inventive. Luisa hangs her washing over her balcony so it drips down over Imma’s. She deliberately shakes out the crumbs from her tablecloth from the same spot. But she claims Imma has been sabotaging the shared electricity meter and damaging her car. Both claim the other threatened them with physical violence.

What may continue to trouble the viewer in the course of the film is the sense that all these scenes are staged for our enjoyment. There are no candid interviews with the protagonists, so there’s little insight into the issue. If, as some of the relatives suggest, Luisa’s anger is part of an underlying psychological disturbance, are we being invited to laugh at it? We learn that in the divorce, she let the husband take the children because she couldn’t afford to support them. But in case we’re in danger of sympathising with her opponent, incomer Imma, we then see this sister-in-law berating her husband: ‘Your family ruined my life!’ And then in a kitchen scene where she’s peacefully make fusilli with a couple of aunts, she suddenly goes off on a noisy rant which feels completely unprovoked.

Why don’t you just move elsewhere? the placid Marshall asks Imma. The male characters generally come off much better than the female ones. But we don’t get an answer, because Imma chooses that moment to flirt with him, try on his hat and then ask for a go with his revolver.

There are more litigious scenes set over Christmas and New Year meals.

Disappointingly, no one dies.

I Want Her Dead is screening at the 5th Cinecittà Italian Doc Fest from 2-5 July.