Author's judgement: 
A film within a film where art, cinema and politics mix: this, in summary, is the plot of the film we are proposing this week. It's about A story without a name, by Roberto Andò, presented out of competition at the recent Venice Film Festival, with an excellent result Micaela Ramazzotti hero. The story narrated actually happened and is part of the "great Italian mysteries" cycle of which we will hardly ever know anything. In 1969 in Palermo a painting by Caravaggio of significant artistic and economic value was stolen. Since then, the painting has disappeared into the maze of national intrigues where, in first place, the mafia appears, which could have been at the same time the client, the beneficiary, the user, the intermediary, the seller and the buyer of the precious painting. . Still no one is able to say with certainty what happened to it and it is even suspected that it may have been broken up and sold in individual parts, as well as being fed to pigs. The only sure thing is that the story has constantly intertwined in shady and obscure affairs of secret services, of more or less institutional negotiations ("according to the rating agencies, the discovery of the picture could raise Italy's economic positions from AAA negative to AAA positive” it is said in the film), of really living characters, the mafia pentiti, who often brought up Caravaggio's canvas.
Telling all of this in the key of news, didactic description of what is known and actually happened, would have been objectively complex and not easy to interpret, if only because "the perpetrator is unknown" and the object of the crime has disappeared. This is perhaps why the screenwriters have chosen to tell the story by placing it within the mechanisms of film production. In fact, we find ourselves in the offices of a production company where Valeria works as a secretary but, in reality, as ghost writers on behalf of the official screenwriter (the usual Alessandro Gassmann, without infamy and without praise). She is contacted by a mysterious character who will lead her directly into the story, with a continuous mixing between the probable part and the one she would like to tell in the film where she writes the screenplay herself inspired by the person who guides her behind the scenes of the happenings.
Roberto Andò he is good at keeping the management tense and balanced in the times and in the historical and political reference contexts. Good blood doesn't lie: it comes from a school of proven quality. He collaborated with Leonardo Sciascia, Federico Fellini, Michael Cimino and other great directors. The actors also respond well to the roles assigned and the whole film flows in a pleasant way, even if it often lingers in excessive complications. However, there is often a certain similarity to the typical narrative modules of television: sequences, shots, lights and colors more akin to the small than to the big screen. However, it seems right to us to grasp an important point in favor of this film: it belongs to a different form, to a successful attempt to make cinema - Italian - which does not belong to the by now abused genres of contemporary comedy. Perhaps, a film of this kind could also have an audience beyond national borders.
