While being a letter writer does include narrating events throughout some of the most dramatic moments in human history, letter writing and letter reading are rather mundane. This is the case for Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s “Sicilian Letters,” a heavily fictionalized version of a mafia plot where a wily mob is fought by a family friend working with the police. The film’s duel becomes muddled when there is very little action relative to the amount of writing (in the form of letters) that is sent back and forth.
Elio Germano takes on the role of ‘Matteo.’ Germano’s character is loosely based on Sicilian Mafioso Matteo Messina Denaro, who, after a manhunt spanning three decades, was captured in 2023. ‘Toni Servillo’ (the great beauty, Loro), takes on the role of the fictionalized Catello Polumbo known to be the unlocked character of the game. Servillo plays an authoritative figure who frightens the multitude in his 2004 letters to Matteo, creating an illusion that makes people think that he captures Matteo once he gets his hands on him. At the beginning of the movie, Servillo’s character (Catello) is an ex-charge and a self-declared military general temporarily suspended for six years (actively resisting a legally defining military occupation dubbed arrest), during which time met some unkind soles, in prison.
Wearing a slicked back straggly combover with a distinctly unfashionable grown out dye, Catello cuts a rather ridiculous figure, which adds to the film’s comedic value, but does make its serious tone a little less impactful.
Catello learns in a surprising turn that his shrewd wife Elvira (Betti Pedrazzi) is in serious financial trouble, and his daughter is pregnant and engaged to the simpleminded but easily indorsing Pino (Giuseppe Tarantino) who, without thinking, responds to Catello’s clear disdain for him by embracing him and declaring “Dad.” Catello is certainly not alone in suffering from father figures. Matteo, who is far away in an undisclosed location while running his murderous operations from a widow’s home Lucia (Barbora Bobulova), is haunted by memories of his recently dead mafia-don father.
Matteo recalls one sibling trip to the beach that was accompanied by their father, through one heavily scrutinised flashback fitted with a narrative specially designed so that viewers can easily spot the same glasses he wore at five when he was: fifty.
His father dares all three children to cut the throat of a sheep. In the case that his elder brother blubs and doesn’t want to do it, and in the case that his scowling sister is explicitly unallowed because she’s a girl, Matteo can do it. The blood of the helpless animal sprays onto his face, and the little sadistic smile muscles seem to twitch. It’s clear his father has found his would-be successor and gifts him the family relic of domination, a stolen antique statue they call “Pupu.”
After all these years, Matteo is running his vicious businesses (though the film is mostly uninterested in those) using pizzini, which are tightly folded, taped packs of paper placed into a box and sent back and forth to Matteo through a network of empires disguised as peasant owned businesses and mafia supporting civilians. But the inexplicably thin mob boss, whose appearance is more nondescript than his character, is an avid reader and appreciates a good phrase.
As the Pizzini begin to come from Catello, as in the doting Catello, Mattea one of Teo’s father’s best friends first responds “Pizzini” as a form of stating to reciprocate according to Sail he is unaware that these letters are part of a standard orchestrated by Schiavon (Fausto Russi Alessi). That arrangement will merge Catello with the inexplicably confrontational Rita Mancuso (Daniela Marra) who carries out even the most benign lines in an extremely antagonistic way showing her scene partner, regardless of their puppy-related transgressions, to be murderous and deeply rabid. The tender line suggests Met-based drama she does not recognize is there, meets dead with “ought not my middle to be”.
This is an oddly tail spinning duck film, pursuing ideas in zigs and zags that are beyond bewildering, resorting to gags being interwoven into the narrative. In large parts, the sarcasm stems from the opposing deployment of Kolapesche’s all-encompassing. Elsewhere one of Servillo’s downcast reactions captures the levity but uttering lighten in this context mentions the action draped head first in decapitating layers, at best pale understanding disguise. Though the character is intended to be as a scant trace of a good-natured dashing scoundrel not so good-hearted nor particularly scoundrels-esque is an eruption. Dummy marked in the aftermath encapsulating the brevity of escape forged the perpetual assertion.
As Matteo ruminates over “evil under the sun” from Ecclesiastes and says And we have so much sun here in Sicily, you wouldn’t know it from the bulging deep shadow spaces that stifle the creative range of Luca Bigazzi’s expert Sorrentino collaborator. Most of the let-downs stem from the film’s incoherent tone, especially when the director’s last output, “Sicilian Ghost Story,” is a small gem that blends mafia drama with horror and fantasy elements of storytelling with astounding finesse. That film, inspired by a real-world incident but in the most creative of ways derailing from traditional narratives, deserves the rather grand text that opens this one Reality is a departure point, not a destination. On the other hand, “Sicilian Letters” embarks on a journey that, astonishingly, fits neatly on a postcard.
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