Histrionic

histrionic







–adjective 

Also, histrionical. 



1. of 

or 

pertaining to actors or acting.  



2. deliberately affected 

or 

self-consciously emotional; overly dramatic, in behavior or speech.  



–noun 

3. an actor. 





　

Not since Evan Hunter's seminal 1974 novel Streets of Gold has an epic followed the shifting currents of contemporary Italian lives with 



as much bravura 

as Marco Tullio Giordana's La Meglio Gioventù 



-- (The Best of Youth). Shot for Italian television but screened at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival (and around the world) as a six-hour feature, Gioventù turns its gaze to the interworkings of a single Mediterranean family, the Caratis. Shifting between substories, Giordana uses the extended run time to map out the transitions of each character over the decades 



so [smoothly], [subtly], and [convincingly] 

that those changes 

[fly under] the audience's [radar].



The director works melodramatic twists into his formula, but, surprisingly, those twists never feel necessary. 



Giordana uses the more histrionic events only as formulaic hooks (and benchmarks), 



and something more essential and wondrous begins to happen at the core of the drama: we find ourselves pulled gently into the sweet, subtle and lyrical growth of the Carati family, collectively, over the passing years -- 



as a larger product of the individual characters' transitions. Equally impressive is Giordana's ability to not only wrap the narrative around Italian historical poles (which will elude Americans in their specificity but are obvious in their existence) but to use the familial events 



as a kind of microcosmic [analogue] (and [corollary]) 



of the broader conflicts in Italian society -- particularly that of the Red Brigade terrorist underground versus the establishment.





denoument

libretto

Threnody