Directed by Ivano De Matteo | Italy | Italian w/ English subtitles | 2014 | Fiction | 93 mins
Sponsored by the Vermont Italian Club
AKAI International Film Fest Award, Venice; Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists 2015 Silver Ribbon; FICE – Federazione Italiana Cinema d’Essai 2014 Award
Film Source: Film Movement
Intro and Q&A led by David Tomasi
Preceded by a pasta reception (co-sponsored with Little Market Garden and Rana Pasta) at 5:30 in the Lake Lobby (Sunday only)
Based on Herman Koch’s New York Times bestselling novel, this masterful adaptation and taut morality play chronicles the downward spiral of a bourgeois family coming unhinged at its foundation after a grisly act of violence. The ‘dinner’ of the title is a regular event in which two wealthy brothers and their wives meet at a fashionable restaurant to exchange banalities. Both couples’ teenage children become entwined in a terrible crime. When the police get involved, the two families face heavy moral dilemmas – how can they protect their children and at what price? As the tension rises, their comfortable lives utterly change. The film goes beyond the exploration of family relationships and troubled teenagers, following the characters’ surprising transformations. Similarly to Human Capital (shown at VTIFF 2014), The Dinner develops into an intense examination of the insulated and hypocritical Italian bourgeoisie.