Reality, Italian director Matteo Garrone's new Cannes film on Big Brother fan

Italian director Matteo Garrone follows his recent film about the Mafia in southern Italy with a more overtly philosophical look at society in Naples. His new film has an English title, Reality, and is among the films competing for the Palme d’Or, the Golden palm award.

Festival de Cannes

The word was out, the large pack of journalists were jostling to get a seat for the Garrone press screening on Friday morning.

It’s a very different visual experience from Gomorrah, his previous film which won the Grand Prize at Cannes in 2008, and which was set in a run-down housing estate and Mafia-run waste dumps.

Reality is, for the best part, set in a charmingly decrepid neighbourhood of Naples, and features a well-fed family, like in the good old days. It’s juxtaposed with the 21st-century shopping mall and Il Grande Fratello (Big Brother) TV set at Cinecittà in Rome.

The title Reality is multi-edged and underscores the irony of TV reality programmes which offer people the chance to, they hope, become rich and famous.

Fishmonger, Luciano, gets addicted to the idea he’s going to be chosen for the Italian Big Brother reality TV show, after being egged on by family and friends.

The bid to be on the show becomes Luciano’s reality.

The role is played sensitively and convincingly by Aniello Arena. In real life Arena is in jail in Italy but joined the prison theatre company in 2001. He was authorised to take part in the shoot but not to come to Cannes.

Garrone questions the meaning of reality. Each one to his own? What does reality mean today?

Garrone draws clearly from the larger-than-life reality of Italian master, Federico Fellini. The opening scene of an aerial view of an 18th-century, overdecorated, horse-drawn carriage arriving at a hotel called Il Soriso (The Smile) could have been his. It’s magnified by a use of bright, deep colours, which would otherwise be garish.

Garrone’s fake 18th-century carriage taking newly-weds to their reception at the start of the film, heralds Luciano’s path away from reality, towards his own distracted light.