That's Italian?

The North End goes tourist

by Jeffrey Gantz

THE NORTH END. Directed by Frank Ciota. Written by Joseph A. Ciota. With Matthew Del Negro, Mark Hartmann, Lina Sivio, Frank Vincent, and Peter Marciano. At the Brattle Theatre this Wednesday, August 26.

Frank Ciota's locally made film about the Italian community of the North End screened at last year's Boston Film Festival, and it's played this summer at the Showcase cinemas in Revere and Randolph, but it has yet to get a regular theater run in Boston. This Wednesday you can catch it in a one-day showing at the Brattle.

Joseph A. Ciota's screenplay twines two stories. Recent Harvard graduates Mark "Mac" McCain (Mark Hartmann) and Freddie Fabucci (Matthew Del Negro) are North End roomies: Mac's an investment banker, Freddie's making a WGBH documentary about the North End. While interviewing the godfather-like "Uncle Dom" (Frank Vincent) at the Hanover Street caffè and restaurant Dolce Vita, they meet part-time waitress Danielle Amato; Mac falls for her and she moves in with them, but he becomes both possessive and abusive, and she finds herself drawn to the more sensitive Freddie. The usual romantic complications ensue. Meanwhile Freddie's documentary shows us how the North End is being invaded by yuppie outsiders (like Mac) and franchises (like CVS) and losing its neighborhood feel and ethnic identity.

Naturally The North End wants to side with the traditionalists against the tourists, but its sensibility is generic and its approach hamfisted. The film leaves Hanover Street only for the obligatory glance at Old North; and apart from a brief shot of Danielle praying in St. Leonard's, it scarcely gets beyond the first block -- the most touristy part of the North End. (Couldn't we at least see Danielle and Mac buying chestnut flour and fava beans on Salem Street? Danielle and Freddie smooching on Copp's Hill?) And for some reason everyone eats at the now-closed European Restaurant (which catered largely to visitors) rather than Dolce Vita's upstairs room (more authentic and better food).

Early on Freddie orders a cappuccino at the caffè and everyone looks embarrassed -- he's done the yuppie thing. That sets up the big finish of The North End: same setting, Freddie goes for the espresso, Uncle Dom winks his approval, Freddie now knows what it means to be Italian. Real-life Italians do drink cappuccino (in the morning, anyway), but they don't say "expresso" (as almost everyone here does), and most of them don't drown their coffee with sugar the way Uncle Dom does. (For the record, I was enjoying an espresso in Dolce Vita's caffè one afternoon last week when a couple of owner Franco Graceffa's friends dropped in; everybody hugged, the friends sat down, and Franco asked, "What do you guys want? Cappuccino? Espresso?")

The logic of Ciota's love triangle doesn't fare a whole lot better. Danielle (why the French form instead of Daniela?) is attractive and vivacious, but that doesn't explain why Mac goes ga-ga at first sight. Played out in soap-opera clichés ("He's not like that, he's different"; "If it's right, nothing else matters"), their relationship makes no sense. But then, verisimilitude doesn't exactly run rampant in The North End. Former football star Mac (we're told he was an All-American lineman -- from Harvard?) goes berserk when Danielle kisses her cousin Elmo. A New York fashion photographer named Jean-Claude is hanging out at Dolce Vita (forget Sonsie or the Armani Café) and "discovers" Danielle, whereupon she decides she has to move to New York because she has "potential." Then her "instant" pregnancy makes nonsense out of the time frame. And Freddie? He introduces himself to his producer's contact with "I was hoping you could set me up with the right people: locals, insiders" -- what, 'GBH hired an Italian-American filmmaker who can't find locals in the North End? It all ends with a horrific murder that, apparently, baffles the police, though it wouldn't have tested Dr. Watson, never mind Holmes.

The actors do what they can with this pasticcio. Hartmann and Del Negro overdo the "Hey, bro' " bit, and I don't know why Hartmann thinks his stereotype Mick character should sound like Travolta; but the duo's angry confrontations are every bit as genuine and frightening as they are banal. Sivio contributes a winsome, Beatrice-like radiance, and Ciota's hand-held camera creates a gritty spontaneity, at the cost of some incoherence. (And don't miss Frank Vincent's hilarious envoi, after the closing credits.) It's good to have the Brattle supporting local filmmaking -- too bad this North End is strictly for tourists.