Is the French writer-director Gerard Corbiau-whose Belgian film “Farinelli” won him his second foreign-language-film Oscar nomination-inventing his own new movie genre? If so, maybe we should call it kitscho bel canto : the ravishingly absurd classical-music epic.
“Farinelli,” based on the life of the most celebrated of all the great Italian music, or castrati singers-Carlo Broschi, a k a Farinelli-is as stupefyingly lurid and ludicrous as it is visually and sonically splendid. The movie stuns you with its extravagant decor and thrilling music-from the baroque operas of Georg Friedrich Handel, Johann-Adolf Hasse, Giovanni-Battista Pergolesi and others. Then it stuns you again with its outrageously over-the-top story line.
How are we supposed to react to a movie so packed with straight-faced nonsense that its single silliest sequence almost seems sensible? That’s the flabbergasting episode in which Farinelli’s mistress steals a new Handel opera score that her lover plans to sing publicly without permission, prompting Handel to break into Farinelli’s house to steal it back.
And what about the scene where Farinelli tries to sing in front of Handel-and faints? Or the opener, where a disconsolate castrato hurtles to his death after screaming to his choir mates, “Your death is in your throat!” (You want to yell back: “Your death is in your script!”)
What accounts-beyond the film’s Belgian origins and the French director-for the fact that the Romans here speak Italian, while the English and Spanish speak French? And how about all those steamy menages a trois, where Farinelli seduces a Baroque groupie, gets her into the boudoir, and then beats a quick retreat while brother Riccardo runs in and hops aboard?
By what perverse whim did the one great star singer of the era famous for diplomacy, nobility of demeanor and the lack of amorous gossip he inspired, suddenly become the castrato Rob Lowe? Where exactly did the writing team of wife Andree and Gerard Corbiau come up with these orgies-which are actually the key to their movie’s whole theme and resolution? Did they comb through the files of the 18th Century Italian equivalent of the National Enquirer? There’s something giddily, grandly ridiculous about the salacity Corbiau cooks up (which the “Farinelli” pressbook insists is all based on fact). It’s as if he were trying to cross-breed “Amadeus” with “Hollywood Wives,” or give us the world of Antonio Vivaldi and Metastasio through the eyes of Robin Leach and Rex Reed.
The movie depicts, in dozens of overheated, overdressed scenes,
Farinelli’s allegedly tormented relationship with brother Riccardo, his feud with Handel (played by Jeroen Krabbe as a sort of glowering composer-vampire), his retreat to the Spanish court at 32 (where he spends his time, as in life, singing lullabies to soothe the neurotic King Philip V) before climaxing-almost literally-with one of the cinema’s more bizarre happy endings.
Yet the story of the castrati-and Farinelli-is so fascinating it doesn’t really need any grotesque embellishments. In the early 18th Century, the Italian “musici”-who were castrated in childhood to preserve their soprano voices-enjoyed a cultural status and popularity unequaled at the time. Music historians compare it, aptly, to the idolization today of androgynous male rock singers like Mick Jagger, David Bowie or Michael Jackson. The castrato voice-ingeniously reproduced in this movie by electronically editing and “morphing” the voices of a counter-tenor (Derek Lee Ragin) and a soprano (Ewa Mallas Godlewska)-was unique for its combination of high-tone purity and muscular power. Audiences swooned and fought over favorites.
But it’s important to remember that, though the operation both preserved the singers’ youthful voices and made them sterile, it didn’t impair their sexual activities (which is why the film’s Farinelli family orgies are possible, if not plausible). Some of them-like Farinelli’s great rival, Caffarelli-were famous for their offstage amours.
Corbiau never touches the key social element: that the majority of the castrati were peasant children mutilated with their parents’ consent to give them a chance at a better life (which most of the singers, who remained journeymen choristers, never got.) That’s one theme you couldn’t illustrate through Farinelli; he was one of a handful of castrati who came from the aristocracy.
Perhaps it’s because Farinelli was regarded by some historians as “the greatest singer who ever lived” that he intrigues Corbiau. In Corbiau’s last imported classical-music opus, 1989’s “The Music Teacher” (also from Belgium and nominated for an Oscar), he spun a fantastic fictional tale that, like “Farinelli,” was dizzy with superlatives. It was about-or so we were told-the world’s greatest retired baritone (played and sung by Jose Van Dam), who spotted a possible great tenor in the street, picking pockets. He tutored him along with his other pupil, the lovelorn world’s greatest soprano, before entering his protege in a dueling World’s Greatest Tenor contest run by his embittered old rival, a defeated great baritone candidate. (Somehow, the world’s greatest contralto and bass didn’t make the party.)
Some critics took “The Music Teacher” seriously, though it struck me as the sort of liederkranz nightmare that might have been dreamed up by someone who had become slightly unhinged by staring at too many Deutsche Grammophon album covers. Still, with its gorgeous period visuals and magnificent music, “Music Teacher” was fun to look at and listen to. And so is “Farinelli.” Corbiau is a highly prolific, much-awarded French TV director and he has an intimidatingly assured technique.
His scenes may be silly, but they’re never sloppy. The cinematography (by Walther Vanden Ende) and production design (by Maria Cristina Reggio) are plush and shiny. The acting-by Krabbe, Stefano Dionisi (Farinelli), Enrico Lo Verso (Riccardo Broschi), Elsa Zylberstein (Alexandra) and Omero Antonutti (Farinelli’s unkempt-looking teacher-composer Nicola Porpora) of “Padre, Padrone”-is confident as well. (Unfortunately, when Dionisi mouths the singing, he seems to be just flapping his lips.)
But confidence can’t save everything in a movie, particularly when the director is intent on showing us the greatest singer who ever lived
fainting before the greatest oratorio composer in between menages a trois. Amusingly, people who complain bitterly about the historical accuracy of films like “Jefferson in Paris,” “JFK” or “Immortal Beloved” probably will ignore this one-because most of them have never heard of Farinelli and, except if they’ve read Anne Rice’s novel “Cry To Heaven,” don’t know much about castrati.
When “Farinelli” recreates Baroque opera, or refashions that eerie ersatz castrato voice, it’s giving us something strange and valuable. So why does it have to ruin things by coming on with the red-hot Broschi brothers and Handel the break-in artist? The death of this movie isn’t in its throat, but in its mind.
”FARINELLI”
(star) (star) 1/2
Directed by Gerard Corbiau; written by Andree & Gerard Corbiau; photographed by Walther Vanden Ende; edited by Joelle Hache; production designed by Maria Cristina Reggio; music by Christopher Rousset; produced by Vera Belmont, Linda Gutenberg, Aldo Lado, Dominique Janne, Stephane Thenoz. A Sony Pictures Classics release; opens Friday at The Pipers Alley and outlying theaters. Running time: 1:49. MPAA rating: R. Language, sensuality, nudity, violence.
THE CAST
Farinelli/Carlo Broschi…………….Stefano Dionisi
Riccardo Broschi……………………Enrico Lo Verso
Alexandra Leyris ………………….Elsa Zylberstein
Georg Friedrich Handel………………..Jeroen Krabbe
Nicola Porpora……………………..Omero Antonutti
Caroline Cellier…………………..Caroline Cellier
