True Story?
Italian film 'Legend of Tony Vilar' tackles
mockumentary format but lacks a firm grasp
Like another Tribeca Film Festival feature, The Grand, “The True Legend
of Tony Vilar” takes on the mockumentary format -- notable because it’s
an Italian film, possibly one of the first examples of filmmakers
outside North America doing so.
“Tony Vilar” follows Peppe Voltarelli, a young Italian singer who
recalls Argentinian singer Tony Vilar as a musical idol of his youth who
disappeared and left the business at the peak of his career. It’s
unclear how much of Tony Vilar’s story is actually documentary and how
much stretches the facts of his life for comic effect.
Anyway, the film has a way of manically, attention deficit
disorder-style flitting from one possible link to finding Tony Vilar to
another. Voltarelli first goes to Argentina, where he quickly learns
Vilar left not soon after leaving the business, and has likely settled
in New York. Once decamping for New York, Voltarelli and an associate
careen from the Bronx to Brooklyn to Little Italy to New Jersey to
Connecticut and back to New York City again, making the movie a series
of 15 to 20 minute meet and greets with people who know Vilar or knew
him or might know where he is, such as an ex-wife, his barber and
others. Along the way Voltarelli seems to grow an entourage with some of
these other characters.
The problem with the film is the mockumentary idea seems to have been
lost in translation to Italian, so the filmmakers throw in impromptu
musical numbers, party scenes and shtick, with the few really funny
ideas (or occurrences, if they really happened) -- like Vilar going
prematurely bald being the reason why he left the business, only being
mentioned in an off-handed way and not being explored enough. For
example, in Christopher Guest’s “Waiting for Guffman,” Guest’s theater
director character is a washout from the big time in New York theater,
and this figures clearly into the characterization throughout the movie,
while in “Tony Vilar,” the failing of the entertainer is told, not
shown. |