Checkered
Michael Mann’s 20-years-in-the-making Ferrari biopic isn’t quite a high-performance vehicle, but it is very nice.
Ferrari
Director: Michael Mann • Writer: Troy Kennedy Martin
Starring: Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell, Patrick Dempsey, Linda Christian
USA • 2hrs 11mins
Opens Hong Kong January 18 • IIB
Grade: B
Did you now Adam Driver was in pre-production on a biopic about Italian luxury jeweller Sotirio Bulgari? It’s a serious period piece this time; the guy founded Bulgari in 1884. And yeah, sure, buddy was Greek, but 1) Greece is on the Mediterranean and 2) he started the brand in Rome. It totally counts. It will complete Driver’s Italian Style Titans trilogy, the final entry following Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci and, now, Michael Mann’s Ferrari. Also? I’m lying. That’s not true. But it should be.
Driver’s Italian accent is better this time around, but anyone expecting a typical Mann film, filled with visual flourish (Miami Vice), hard light (Manhunter), creative lens choices (Collateral) and, yes, thundering gunfire (Heat) needs to brace for impact. The only thundering this time around is from car engines revving around a Modena track and through the countryside during a deadly road race. Mann’s been working on the film for roughly 20 years, and he’s opted for a relatively intimate portrait of a publicly ambitious automotive trailblazer – one willing to brush off death as part of the process – but a privately conflicted grieving father trying to make the clashing double life he’s leading into one. It’s low-key, staid stuff for Mann, though the gorgeous locations provide Ferrari the eye candy the director normally would. If you want to watch fancy cars go really fast with some added track intrigue, watch Ron Howard’s Rush, or James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari. The intrigue here is internal, and you have to make an effort to find it.
Toy boy
But find it you will, which is very often down to Driver (allegedly stepping in after Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman dropped out), fully inhabiting the role of Enzo Ferrari as Driver usually does. The film picks up in 1957, when Ferrari S.p.A is in financial trouble, rival race car manufacturer Maserati is breathing down his neck, Enzo’s just lost a driver in a track accident and the prestigious Mille Miglia, an open road endurance race (similar to Le Mans) is around the corner. More pressing, his relationship with his wife Laura (Penélope Cruz, crushing it) is deteriorating. Neither can quite move past the death of their son a year earlier, and to make matters more difficult she’s his business partner with a say in what happens at the company. Then there’s Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley doing a heinous Italian accent before giving up altogether), the mother of Enzo’s second young son Piero, with whom he has the less fraught bond and simple life he craves. But things there are getting sticky too, as Lina is demanding Enzo recognise Piero as his child (he’s currently vice chair of Ferrari, so). And all before one of motorsports greatest catastrophes.
By focusing on a brief, very specific moment in Enzo’s life, they avoid the traps of the biopic, and it’s arguably a defining moment. Ferrari was notoriously media shy, and so Mann, writer Troy Kennedy Martin (who died in 2009) and Driver have plenty of dramatic licence to play with, and they do. Up to a point. There’s only so much leeway they can take when source material is thin on the ground, but Driver gives his interpretation of Enzo enough substance to keep us watching. He gives him a sense of humour, and a media savviness when it comes to his cars. When his new driver, the doomed Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone), gets a visit from his movie star girlfriend Linda Christian (Sarah Gadon) – who leans on the logo – Enzo smoothly moving her ass is priceless. And he makes the pain of loss palpable in his visits to the family tomb for chats with his son. That he bears this sadness in isolation, not even Laura is there, says a great deal about the man.
Or does it? By definition the film doesn’t really tell us much about Enzo. As a character study it’s moderately insightful in its psychologising, but it remains at a respectful distance. Did the deaths at Mille Miglia have an impact? Not sure. Did it turn him into the ruthless industrialist he was alleged to be? Maybe, but that might have always been in him. Perhaps more of the precisely calibrated Cruz as the furious and furiously supportive Laura might have helped. Their scenes together have a spiky energy that suggests they’re perpetually on verge of either a bloody fight or frantic sex. More please. Unfortunately, Woodley comes off like a disaffected valley kid by comparison and her miscasting makes Enzo’s devotion to her over Laura baffling in a way that makes little sense.
Of course, it’s a Mann film, so technically Ferrari is as precision engineered as the car. It’s unusual but Mann substitutes warm, earthy tones and smooth camera work where he’d normally deploy slick, icy blues and a split diopter, and DOP Erik Messerschmidt (The Killer, Mank) captures the races with the perfect balance of tension, awe and mid-century grit. Is it the Ferrari movie we wanted? Maybe not. Is it the one we expected? Definitely not. Enzo would probably be proud. — DEK