Ritesh Mehta

Matarrese’s reverence for Bini is balanced, matter-of-fact, perhaps a tad bemused. The Italian director, also the main camera operator, is interested as much if not more in magnifying the patients and capturing the range of their emotions — their silent traumas and repressed frustrations, corner smiles and qualified satisfactions.

The President’s Cake is a case of relatively modest filmmaking that becomes rich because archetype and characterization coordinate the story world.

Any weaknesses lie more in the slightly tired general themes Ma explores. The Mother and the Bear doesn’t bring a lot of new material to the familiar narrative of parents becoming enlightened towards their child’s sexuality.

The film’s honesty, whether loquacious or laconic, sears even more in the absence of a score. Its observational ethos is remarkable given that it is quasi-autobiographical.

The film just lacks in, you know, tension, danger, build, and stakes, the hallmarks of dramatic narrative. It’s almost as though the word “mellifluous,” pertaining to Hania Rani’s score, was coined for this film.

It works if you are really paying attention to the pageturner storytelling and have the spatial intelligence to proactively connect plants to payoffs.

Unfortunately, the film never transcends its tone of ever-present and palpable danger to become a more satisfying character piece.