Io Don Giovanni’s strongest scenes come during its performance sequences.
Film explores the life of Mozart’s finest librettist
On paper a cinematic retelling of the writing behind Mozart’s celebrated opera Don Giovanni through the eyes of his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte suggests a realm of sweeping possibilities. In practise however director Carlos Saura’s heavy-handed romanticism leaves little dramatic impression instead falling a far third behind the legendary Vittorio Storaro’s stunning cinematography and the impeccable full scenes of sequences from Don Giovanni itself.
We meet da Ponte (a rather flat Lorenzo Balducci) as a womanizing priest exiled from Venice for blasphemy. His mentor in all things is none other than the king of womanizers Casanova (Tobias Moretti) who arranges an introduction to Salieri (Ennio Fantastichini) official court composer in Vienna and infamous nemesis to the young Mozart (Lino Guanciale) — a relationship explored brilliantly in Milos Forman’s Amadeus . As an example of Saura’s bizarre sense of narrative timing it is within mere moments of meeting Salieri that the king also enters and da Ponte is given his first commission working with Mozart.
Further nonsense follows — da Ponte meets the love of his life Annetta (Emilia Verginelli) in a creepy sequence in which her father draws back a curtain to reveal her sleeping all but presenting her to da Ponte. Were the Viennese settings not so expertly reconstructed through a blend of paintings projections and stage craft (look closely at the buildings — they’re flat stage set reconstructions) Io Don Giovanni would be an entirely disposable bit of heaving bosom and melodrama.
Where it’s all saved however is when Saura puts the soap opera of da Ponte’s pursuits on the backburner and focuses simply on the music. Adriana Ferrarese’s (Ketevan Kemoklidze) close-up solo in the role of Donna Elvira is shot so lovingly by Storaro that the effect is truly breathtaking. Other full scenes of the opera (framed as “rehearsals”) are leagues more interesting than what happens offstage.
Had Saura realized the opportunity at hand — filming one of the world’s most beloved operas through the gifted eye of Storaro — Io Don Giovanni could have made for an un-missable bit of cinematic escape. Unfortunately as it stands the onstage performance sequences are too few and far between and the plodding episodes scattered in-between leave little behind. Above all else as a librettist working on his greatest triumph we see very little of da Ponte actually working . Mozart is forever a crumpled mess behind his piano yet da Ponte’s words seem to come out of nowhere never a single hair out of place. By the closing credits da Ponte never comes off as a poetic genius — but rather just a bit of a non-entity who was lucky to momentarily orbit around a true master.
