Loose Cannons (2010)

Father and owner of a pasta making business, learns that his eldest son, predestined to take over the company, is gay. The latter is announced on a family party, and surprises everyone present. The father does not take it very well, and sends the son away packing.

Peculiar is that the announcement is just a few minutes ahead of the second son, who was initially planning to announce his gayness at that same family event, but did not know of the plans of his brother. The second son refrains from same announcement, fearing that his father won't survive a double "disaster". He tries to take up his role as second-in-line son to become the future company owner. But his heart is with being a writer, and not in leading a pasta factory.

Of course, the father does not see all this. He is too much occupied with "what people in the village may think". He is also mad at his family, that they did not forewarn him because "everyone can recognize gay people by their behavior".

Several amusing story lines unfold. The family is large enough to offer many opportunities for sub-plots. It's a pity that most are not developed to their full potential. Even worse, some are rather unrealistic, like the gay friends of the second son staying for a few days.

The grandmother seems to be the only one overseeing what happens within the family. Some of the time she throws some hints around, but most of those are not picked up. She is reluctant to really interfere. This is a great role. She is also the only one not adding to all the standard gay clichés that we see passing.

In the final scene, the first son re-appears at a funeral where also the father is present. They even come close physically, both being involved in carrying the coffin. Whether they are about to get closer mentally, is left in the open. Given that the second son already has made clear being unhappy in his role as future company owner, this could provide for a chance to welcome the lost son. However, this story line (like several others) are left as an exercise for the viewer, so it seems.

Fmovies: For a film in which each character harbours some tragic secret - of unrequited love, betrayal, unfulfilled ambition, alcoholism, a death wish or suchlike – Ferzan Özpetek's Loose Cannons is surprisingly uplifting.

In this family drama/rom-com-with-a-twist, the Istanbul-born Italian director combines precise aesthetics with good-looking actors, but, regrettably, Loose Cannons is also full of all-too-predictable stereotypes. This makes the film, despite its underlying theme of the pressures of stifling social conformism, easy on the eye and light of heart. Think Festen meets Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

The loose cannons of the title are found amongst the Cantone family, the owners of a pasta factory in Puglia, in southern Italy. The father, Vincenzo, has decided that the time has come to hand over responsibilities to his sons, Antonio and Tommaso. His daughter's husband being an imbecile and his daughter being a woman, the brothers are the obvious heirs to the family business.

Tommaso, ostensibly enrolled in business school in Rome but actually a gay literature student with a novel freshly submitted to a publisher, returns home for a pompous dinner where Vincenzo plans to announce the generational handover in front of the entire family and some new business associates. Tommaso, having just confided in his brother that he is planning to use the occasion to reveal his literary and same-sex relationship aspirations, is himself taken by surprise at the dinner: Antonio beats him to it, coming out of the closet and triggering a heart attack in his father.

Antonio is disowned and Tommaso, afraid that opening up about his gayness would be a final death knell for his father, reluctantly steps in to manage the factory with the assistance of Alba, a beautiful young family friend with a nose for business deals and eye-catching pasta packaging. No matter how hard he tries, even caressing the freshly-baked pasta every morning as his grandfather used to, Tommaso can't develop a passion for macaroni. He wants to get back to Rome, to his writing and his gay lover, a bookish doctor.

While the film centres on Tommaso and his dilemmas, Loose Cannons has an assortment of characters with an assortment of repressed emotions. There's the homophobic and patriarchal father; the outwardly stoic, but in reality sensitive, mother; the daughter stuck in a passionless marriage with a podgy husband and two chubby daughters; the spinster auntie indiscreetly drenching her sorrows in whiskey; the diabetic grandmother dishing out pearls of wisdom; and the ugly, frustrated maid.

Though Loose Cannons is never dull, with plenty of narrative twists, flashback scenes and regular introductions of new characters, all the typecasting soon grates. The scenes with the multi-generational, loud- mouth Cantone family gathering around tables brimming with food quickly come to feel like quirky pasta adverts.

The film is marked by clichés from the outset. The opening scene, which turns out to be a flashback sequence into the past of granny Cantone, couldn't be more kitsch: a beautiful, teary-eyed young bride runs up the steep staircase of a solitary stone house, where she confronts a man, his shirt unbuttoned at the neck, with a gun – first aimed at him, then pressed against her own chest. The man tries to wrangle the gun out of the bride's hand, at which point the film cuts to a shot of the house's exterior and the banging sound of a gun shot is heard.

Things don'

Ferzan Ozpetek's new film centers around a young man, Tommaso, who wants to step out of the family pasta making business and be a writer, he also wants to tell his family he's gay. When at a dinner party his brother announces he's gay, the father has a heart attack and leaves Tommaso at a loss. He is left to pick up the pieces whilst trying to deal with his own hidden truth, the attraction to him of a female colleague and his father's homophobia.

The film has an array of characters, Tommaso's family, many of them also have hidden truths, some are revealed, some are not. Potentially this could lead to a intriguing film, but Loose Cannons struggle in many ways. Firstly the subject matter is played, for the most part, quite seriously. Yes, there is a funny side to the situation Tommaso finds himself him, but there is also a serious side, that his life as he wants it, is on hold again. But there are other serious overtones: his father's refusal to accept or understand his other son's sexuality, his grandmother dwells on her own past and lost opportunities and there is his colleague's longing for someone unattainable. There are some very touching, often moving moments in the film, as characters reveal aspects of their lives to some and withdraw from others. Yet part way in the film tries to lighten up with the introduction of Tommaso's gay friends. Unable to be openly gay they downplay their sexuality with some quite funny results, but it feels out of place. As Tommaso looks onto the life he and his friends could have, so we the viewer look on wondering whether we are watching a comedy or drama.

Ozpetek presents this world beautifully, the film is shot well and looks great, but so does everything to the point that it all seems too perfect. All the characters are beautiful, stylish and middle class, living well and only through the aunt do we see any imperfections, which seem to be done for laughs. The perfection of the characters seems highly unrealistic, although perhaps one could say that despite the perfection on the outside, they have many imperfections within.

The cast are all very good, the actress playing the grandmother, is marvelous and the film does present an interesting story. However, because it never seems to know where it's going and there is little in the way of conclusion to many elements this leads to, at times, a very frustrating film experience despite it's potential.

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Loose Cannons fmovies. Ferzan Ozpeteck the Turkish born director is one of the most reliable Italian directors of the last few years. He visits and revisits his own personal universe like an Italian Pedro Almodovar but, not quite. His gay characters are likable but not totally credible, I wonder why. Here a beautiful cast headed by the, getting better, Riccardo Scamarccio tells us a family tragicomedy that, although set in 2010, behaves like something out of the 50's. The high moments are underline by the beautiful Ilaria Occhini as the grandmother, a character with vision and strength. The Ennio Fantastichini character is rather hard to take and the script is clunky at best. Ideas have to be nurtured but here they seem to have been removed out of the oven a bit too early. It needed more time. Pacing is always a problem in Ozpeteck films. I started glancing at my watch half way through the film and that has to do with thought or the lack of it. It's not organic enough. It feels as if the destiny of the characters was decided on the go. Pity. What's good however, it's very good and makes it a film worth seeing.

Fernan Ozpetek delivers another talented direction in a movie which stands somehow apart from his previous ones, being here the entertaining and even funny element more evident and succeeded. The main theme has dramatic and thoughtprovoking implication, being it the difficulty for a son to reveal his homosexuality to his family, and the difficulty, almost the impossibility for the family to accept this revelation. What stands out here, as in all movies directed by Ozpetek, is the delicacy in handling with still difficult and "disturbing" topics, not judging nor siding for any point of view, but simply trying, sometimes with a radical but effective attitude, to offer a believable contemporary frame. At the same time, some funny moments are delivered and help to relieve the story of the easy risk to become too melodramatic or pedantic.

The cast proves cohesive, each character well characterized and well integrated with the others. The performance offered by Ilaria Occhini, playing the grandmother, is significantly impressive and touching: she is referred as the loose cannon of the family, but she is actually the true emotional core of the family and of the movie, as well. Merit has to be given also to the youngest cast, belonging to the more glamorous and less committed Italian cinematography, but capable to convince and appeal the viewer thanks to their heartfelt interpretations, and not only thanks to their beauty.

I thought this was a fabulous film, really worth going to see. The acting was superb and it was beautifully shot. I thought the main storyline was great, to me it was really believable, obviously there were over the top elements to add comedy value, but even in this age there are parents who don't except their children being gay. However, whilst I thought the main story was great I didn't think the side story lines quite melded into the film, the story with the grandmother and Nicolo, and the other with Alba (don't want to give away too much, for me didn't quite work. I also think the story with the brother could have been explored more throughly. This film is well worth a couple of hours of your time, despite the ending I still came out smiling. For those of you who aren't too keen on gay scenes there is only one kiss in this film. This film is more about family, expectations and how we all strive not to disappoint our parents. Don't miss it.