Diamanti is Özpetek's most personal film

As happens to most directors, Ferzan Özpetek also felt the need to reflect on his career. Not to put an end to it, mind you, but to ponder what his cinema has meant to himself, his audience, and the people he has shared it with and worked alongside. Diamanti is not just the title of his new work, released after the not particularly praised Cinema Olimpo, but also a representation of his eighteen protagonists through whom he stages a “vaginodrome” — a term taught by the lively Geppi Cucciari — which serves as both a reflection and a container of his poetics. Because, whether one likes it or not, Özpetek does have a poetics, and he has consistently brought it to the big screen with great coherence in themes, aesthetics, and target audience.

A work that does not have a single story yet contains many souls. The making of certain costumes for a film that portrays the pains, collaboration, moments of joy, and struggles of a more or less united group of women in the 1970s, who say to themselves, “alone, we might be ants,” but together, they claim to be a force. It’s evident that Özpetek is less interested in storytelling. It becomes clear that the time required to properly develop the narrative arc demands an effort too ambitious to execute without faltering. However, even when each character’s story is followed and roughly sketched out, the director’s, and thus his fans’, main focus (less so for those who dislike him) is precisely to make his gems shine, often at the expense of the narrative fabric, relying instead on his signature strength: emotions.

Emotions have always guided Ferzan Özpetek's filmography, like a compass to return to whenever one feels lost. This time, the direction was clear: to create a summation of his cinema, which has always been filtered through a feminine perspective. The consequences matter little; the goal is to let his actresses shine. In this, Diamanti succeeds with ease, carried by the talent of its “characters,” and even when the melodrama intensifies to the point of overflowing and the script becomes more of a framework to let the cast run free, the female ensemble responds enthusiastically to the director’s desires. And this is the essence of it all. It’s pointless to pontificate on the validity of the work, noting its naïve aspects, often present in Özpetek’s traits, or to harshly critique some of its more emphatic choices (like certain close-ups) or its undeniably superficial elements (ranging from the issue of domestic violence to the inserts with Elena Sofia Ricci).

In illuminating the protagonists, Özpetek attempts to steal some of their radiance, stepping out of the shadow of the director, almost becoming a character himself. Almost, because the work’s meta-cinematic spirit is as weak as the rest of the script — co-written with Carlotta Corradi and Elisa Casseri, except for a decent and focused depiction of each character — but like the entire story, it is imbued with a solipsism that is nonetheless honest, not deceitful. Never false, but naïve, and for that reason, pure. It is an important film for the director, and he wants to make this clear to the audience. There’s an affection that is the same one his actresses displayed in agreeing to participate in the project and share the stage together, wrapped in the soundtrack (also laden with pathos) by Giuliano Taviani and Carmelo Travia and enveloped by the exquisite costume work of Stefano Ciammitti. A film by Ferzan Özpetek, in its own way about Ferzan Özpetek if we refer to his cinema, and for those who appreciate the director and his actresses.