‘Roma Elastica’ Review: Marion Cotillard Plays a Movie Star Losing Both Her Mind and Body in an Over-the-Top 1980s-Set Psychodrama
Italian giallo horror flicks, American slasher flicks, Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession, Fellini’s Satyricon and a film-within-a-film described as “Antonioni meets Escape from N.Y.” are some, but clearly not all, of the works referenced in French director Bertrand Mandico’s delirious homage to cinema and the ’80s, Roma Elastica.
Clearly destined for hardcore movie buffs and/or lovers of extreme kitsch, this behind-the-scenes psychodrama stars Marion Cotillard as a deathly ill scream queen who arrives in Rome in 1982 to shoot a sci-fi movie with artsy pretentions, only to learn that stranger things are happening off-camera and perhaps in her own mind.
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Roma Elastica
The Bottom Line Nostalgic kitsch for movie cultists. Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Midnight Screenings)Cast: Marion Cotillard, Noémie Merlant, Martina Scrinzi, Agnese Claisse, Isabella Ferrari, Maurizio Lombardi, Ornella Muti, Franco Nero
Director, screenwriter: Bertrand Mandico
1 hour 47 minutes
Splattered in blood, dusted in coke, spewing vomit, and, in one standout scene, growing a second head out of the back of her own, Cotillard carries a film that’s a take-it-or-leave-it proposition: Either you thrive in its excesses and cinematic references, or, like this critic, eventually grow weary of a guilty pleasure without much substance.
After making a slew of shorts and videos, Mandico burst onto the cult scene in 2017 with his transgressive teenage fantasy flick, The Wild Boys. He followed that up with a pair of fever dream features (After Blue (Dirty Paradise), She Is Conann) that revealed hints of Lynch, Cronenberg, Guy Maddin and other boundary-pushing directors.
Roma Elastica is very much Mandico’s 8 ½, reveling in the highs and lows of filmmaking, particularly for the kinds of B-movies that have inspired some of his work. Cotillard plays Eddie, a screen diva who we first encounter on a schlocky horror shoot in the U.S., where she stabs an old pervert to death and delivers a monologue that blows everyone on set away.
The sequence is deliberately over-the-top, but that’s very much Mandico’s style: everything is outré — sometimes gorgeously so — from the sets (courtesy of Toma Baqueni) and costumes (Pauline Jacquard) to a scenario that’s mostly a pretext for indulging in ‘80s-era nostalgia of the trashier kind.
After a fatal doctor’s visit reveals that Eddie has terminal brain cancer, she decides to go ahead with her next, and probably last, starring role, arriving in Rome with her makeup artist-bodyguard-confidant, Valentina (Noémie Merlant, Portrait of a Lady on Fire). The two are accosted by paparazzi and lots of self-important Italians at the airport, which, like most of the movie’s locations, resembles a Cinecitta set made by people who’ve been experimenting with way too many hard drugs.
Indeed, Eddie soon finds herself holed up in a dilapidated Roman apartment that looks like a squat for filthy rich heroin addicts — a fact confirmed when she meets her neighbors, who are employed on her movie as special effects artists (a reference is made to the great Carlo Rambaldi, who won Oscars for his work on Alien and E.T.). Soon enough, they’re all having a drug-fueled orgy that includes the famous octopus creature from Possession, leaving Eddie in an even worse state than when she arrived.
After appearing on a zany Italian talk show in which the live audience wear distorted ape masks, Eddie finally makes it to set to play Rowina, “the rock star of the art world” in a futuristic Rome circa 2026. A few nods to our troubled times (including President Donald Trump) are made in that movie-within-a-movie, though it’s hard to understand much of what’s happening beyond the crazy vibe, which Mandico captures in high-contrast black-and-white, employing superimpositions and other classic effects.
Roma Elastica works better when it centers on Eddie’s frenzied state and fading health, whether mental or physical. Hidden behind aviator glasses whenever she’s off set and sporting creepy contact lenses whenever Eddie steps in front of the camera, Cotillard is the perfect vehicle for Mandico’s twisted look at the agony and ecstasy of stardom — or rather, cultish stardom of the Z-grade variety. Actresses-losing-their-shit flicks like Opening Night and Sunset Boulevard come to mind at times, although this film is less invested in psychology than in both psychodrama and psychedelics.
That can be fun for a stretch, but the non-stop antics become exhausting for anyone searching for something deeper, or perhaps tamer. Mandico makes no concessions with his latest feature, which will probably please his loyal fan base more than anyone else. Like his heroine, who claims she dies in every film she stars in, the director takes his cinema to the limit here, going out in a blaze of glory and gore.
Full credits
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Midnight Screenings)Production company: Atelier de Production
Cast: Marion Cotillard, Noémie Merlant, Martina Scrinzi, Agnese Claisse, Isabella Ferrari, Maurizio Lombardi, Ornella Muti, Franco Nero
Director, screenwriter: Bertrand Mandico
Producers: Thomas Verhaeghe, Mathieu Verhaeghe
Cinematographer: Nicolas Eveilleau
Production designer: Toma Baqueni
Costume designer: Pauline Jacquard
Editor: Laure Saint-Marc
Composer: Pierre Desprats
Sales: Kinology
In English, French, Italian
1 hour 47 minutes
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