There wasn’t much left shopping to do for in comp titles from Cannes, so after Loach’s Looking for Eric, Arnold’s Fish Tank, Porumboiu’s Police, Adjective and Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, IFC Films have grabbed Marco Bellocchio’s mildly satisfying biography on Ida Dalser – Mussolini’s stubborn, proud first wife expertly played by Italian thesp Giovanna Mezzogiorno. I loved how Bellocchio opens big and gets creative with stock footage, but I didn’t care much about Vincere past the midway point – perhaps it was festival fatigue (I caught this on the last day of the festival). The film will be shown at TIFF and the NYFF – we can expect a 2010 release for the pic.
Before became a powerful dictator, Mussolini had a a past. He had a wife and a son, Benito Albino, who was born, acknowledged and then denied. The secret bears a name: Ida Dalser (Mezzogiorno). It is a dark page in history, one ignored in the official biography of the Duce. When Ida meets Mussolini in Milan, he is the editor of Avanti and an ardent Socialist who intends to guide the masses towards an anti-clerical, anti-monarchical, socially emancipated future. Ida already had a fleeting encounter with him in Trento and remained thunderstruck.
