Loose Cannons

This is from the Pheonix Cinema film diary:
"As a homosexual man choosing how and when you come out to friends and family is no small matter. So having rehearsed your announcement a thousand times, what would you do if your brother makes the same announcement before you, and your father has a heart attack? Ingrained family attitudes are rarely examined in Italian cinema and while undeniably comic in tone, Loose Cannons achieves an openness and humanity which is surprisingly inspiring."


I found it beautiful to look at, especially the street scenes, the close ups of the faces, the formality of the mise-en-scene. The dressings of the interior room scenes were so perfect.  My subjective experience was of great sadness as it made me think of the human suffering such a  society needs as it  struggles to fit in with the 20th century's Freudian revolution in our understandings of sexuality. This revolution is not of Copernican dimension but it certainly is enormous and the use of the device of the father's heart attack is a such a multi-layered metaphor for what is going on and needs to go on.  Perhaps the Italian experience is particularly difficult because of the presence of the HQ of the Catholic Church is currently in Rome. But even here in Leicester, the recent row over the BBC Radio Leicester programme by Dulcie Dixon illustrates that, whilst it might not be stylish here compared with Italy, there are almost identical forces at work that would cajole gay people into pretending they are heterosexual. Is heterosexuality compulsory?


It is no wonder that one of the great contributors to critical theory, Leo Basani, was Italian pushing queer theory out of the narrow closet so that the lives seen and lived in the film can sometimes produce considerable works of creativity but usually not. I thought the, perhaps over easy, polarisation of the younger gay son's choices between factory management and starving novelist does capture something important not just in Italy. Then there is the allowed hypocrisy of heteronormativity which is so claustrophobic with the the husband being allowed a mistress and his wife being forced to condone it.


Having said all this I liked the film and am glad it is popular in Italy where it must contribute to to debate about the sexualities, repression and the gap between theory and practice which needs to be better balanced.


https://tickets.phoenix.org.uk/visInternetTicketing/visMovieInfo.aspx?MovieName=Loose+Cannons&CinemaID=1001