Storia di B. – La scomparsa di mia madre (2019)

Storia di B. – La scomparsa di mia madre: Directed by Beniamino Barrese. With Benedetta Barzini, Beniamino Barrese, Lauren Hutton, Stephanie DeBaillew. A once-iconic fashion model strives to escape the world of images and disappear for good, but her son’s determination to make a final film about her sparks an unexpected collaboration and confrontation with the camera’s gaze.

“Begins as a charming and heartwarming love letter from a son to his Italian supermodel mother who made a social impact on the industry, but quickly veers into being a movie about himself and his own lifelong obsession with her. Much of the film feels more like a behind the scenes featurette for the finished product than a completed film.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIf the lost privacy of a supermodel who cannot escape the perpetual spotlight of the male gaze is a central theme to the film, then constantly invading her space against her repeated demands to turn off the camera or stop filming only achieves to establish an intrusive and uncomfortable vibe for the viewer and artificially create the precise basis of her angst. Perhaps less honest filmmakers would have cut that footage out, but given the nature of the filmu0026#39;s subject, it really just makes everything worse.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eDespite her vocal insistence on remaining private, her son films her changing, taking a s***, and sleeping. I think there exist more delicate and respectful ways to pay respect to an elderly womanu0026#39;s poignant desire to disappear from a world in which her existence was defined within still images tailored to manu0026#39;s concept of beauty. Only at the end of the film does the filmmaker unveil his motheru0026#39;s responses to the existential questions he poses at the beginning (when this still had much promise).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWhatever this movie was supposed to be about was entirely lost in the creepy and violating manner in which it was made. The way it exists now, a good hour could be removed and it would still improve the film. Iu0026#39;d skip it.”