REVIEW - SACRO GRA

A scene in Gianfranco Rosi's portrait of life on the GRA, the ring-road circling Rome, looks in on a mass being held at the location of a supposed minor miracle, in close-ups of the glamorous women who come to worship at the sight of something Rosi never cares to reveal to us - he's not interested in what these people are interested in, he's interested in these people. Any such documentary about life in Rome must surely contain at least some sojourn into catholicism; Sacro GRA, not dissimilarly to that faith, exhibits a concern toward two things that sustain our bodies and our minds in life - sex and death, and also a resignation to the banality of existence, and how we might find satisfaction in that banality. Ageing prostitutes sing away their solace. A local man takes painstaking care of palm trees along the road, an obsession that manifests itself as a personal war against palm tree weevils. Residents of an apartment block peer out of the window at nearby dwellings, also never revealed to the camera - these particular people edge closest to consciously shattering the sharp sense of reality Rosi captures in his unobtrusiveness (one suspects that this was an exceptionally simple and swift film to shoot), and as fascinating as it may be to observe the ordinary lives of ordinary people, their irrepressible urge to perform to camera (as subtly as possible, though not subtly enough) introduces a slight touch of stageyness to the film at times. And it's one that Rosi's film is in no need of, since his subjects are individually compelling, their real-life, day-to-day, commonplace stories elevated by the knowledge that this is, indeed, reality, and not some writer's overcooked representation of it. A fictional film may need to try so hard to make you feel. Sacro GRA shows genuine people, genuinely feeling, and there's no dramatised representation of life that can come close to the effect that has.