Ferrari

This review may contain spoilers!

Ferrari is a biopic about Enzo Ferrari at a time in his life where his company was facing bankruptcy, he was living between two households and he was hedging all of his bets on the Mille Miglia, the last auto race of it's kind. 

This film was oddly transfixing at times, you felt the pressure of Enzo Ferrari faintly but present enough to invest you more and more as the film went along. One of the great feats this film manages to achieve is depicting the relationship between Enzo and his wife, Laura. There is such wild, heavy resentment from the outset here. Ferrari cannot reconcile that he lost a son while with Laura, while Laura blames Ferrari for the death of their son and abandoning her. The string of wild behaviour, lashing out and deep-rooted grudges that come to light between these two comprise the grit of the film. I think watching Laura unravel all the secrets Enzo has held from her and still remaining loyal in her way was a captivating character journey. I should also mention the horror I felt watching the events at Guidizzolo, it might just be the most alarming thing I've seen in cinemas for a long time. The audience I was in all expressed various outcries of shock, I felt arrested to my seat in that moment. A scene that makes you want to run away, but you take it all in at that moment as you wonder at the tragedy of this moment in history.

I wasn't much of a fan of the style of Ferrari, which feels like an ironic statement. However, I'll be the first to admit they captured the whiplash nature of the car racing scenes extremely well. In fact the Mille Miglia sequence was very pulse-pounding and creatively filmed. In my mind all of the creative energy really did pour into that last big moment leading into the final act. I also have to shout out Daniel Pemberton's brilliant score, his theme for Enzo evokes a melancholic sense of loss and tragedy that hangs faintly over our protagonist.

 

Adam Driver, who played Enzo Ferrari, marks a solid protagonist portrayal; Driver takes a cold role and finds the points where he can breathe a bit of life into him. Daniela Piperno, who played Adalgsia Ferrari, is a real viper of a role; Piperno really has some fun with some of the most cutting dialogue in the feature.

However, the best performance came from Penélope Cruz, who played Laura Ferrari. It has been a long time since I've seen Cruz in a film that really reminds me what propelled her to the top, but this was something truly remarkable. From the beginning we are treated to a very embittered figure, a woman who is worn out waiting for someone who is perpetually absent. Yet what I loved about Cruz's introduction is just how wild and unpredictable her scorn is, she explodes into sudden bouts of rage one moment or delivers quiet cutting lines the next. This is a role who feels like she should collapse but she turns into a completely vicious fighter out of spite if nothing else. I found the work her and Driver did to establish a broken relationship that still came together at times very complex work, it spoke tremendously to their talent as performers. The final scene we get from Cruz's Laura is something broken and sad, a bit triumphant but a hollow victory for sure. I have missed this type of performance from Penélope Cruz, I hope I see her in something equally good soon.

This movie is a difficult one to get immersed into at first, everything is held at arms length and the characters aren't especially likeable. Top of that list is Enzo Ferrari, who drifts from scene to scene with this dour, unrelenting lack of expression. As an audience member it becomes difficult to relate to a lead protagonist if they are entirely impassive, which is how Enzo is written for eighty percent of the film. There is also a real aimless quality to this film, it meanders through Ferrari's life and personal struggles, but there isn't a real sense of urgency to these problems. In fact, the stakes feel pointedly low until the Mille Miglia and even after this race the stakes get dropped right back down again. There are a lot of points in this film where the story of Ferrari feels full of inaction and impotence, it's a story with some impressive moments but as a whole it isn't thrilling enough to centre a movie over two hours long around. 

While I loved the racing visuals in this film I really cannot praise the cinematography as a whole. This film is riddled with poor framing, ugly close-ups and extremely janky movements that posit an unskilled hand behind the lens. The editing doesn't help matters at all, often taking too long to cut away or moving an a rapid confused pace. As a whole this is a feature that looks unappealling for almost the whole way through which really brought it down several pegs in my eyes.

Shailene Woodley, who played Lina Lardi, might just be one of the weaker performances from the main cast; Woodley's line delivery feels like something from a fresh table read and her chemistry with Driver is absent. Giuseppe Festinese, who played Piero Lardi, has set the bar very low for child actor performances this year; Festinese really overperforms in any scene where he has more than two lines. Gabriel Leone, who played Alfonso De Portago, is quite a featureless performance; Leone really leaves no mark on this character and would be entirely forgettable if not for a marked death scene. Patrick Dempsey, who played Piero Taruffi, is the worst performance in the film by a long margin; if that is the level of accent work we can expect from Dempsey then I struggle to understand how he was even cast. Lino Musella, who played Sergio Scaglietti, really lays his line delivery on a bit thick; really overselling his big poignant lines as if he were in a melodrama.

At times a very ugly biopic that is lifted up by that sucker punch of a final act and a masterful performance from Penélope Cruz. I would give Ferrari a 6/10.