© Provided by Liberation
Jesmark Scicluna is a young Maltese fisherman who plays his own role.
Debut film by American-Maltese director Alex Camilleri, Luzzu Logically went through Sundance, where he won a special jury prize for his non-professional comedian, a young Maltese fisherman who plays his own role. And, indeed, much of the interest of Luzzu holds on to the documentary substance of his plans, Camilleri’s camera being tied to the increasingly thwarted efforts of Jesmark Scicluna to continue to practice traditional fishing aboard his luzzu, almost magical boat handed down from father to son. While the grip of industrialization and European standards tightens, his boat is taking on water and his baby must have had a hard time growing, Jesmark Scicluna offers the camera his patient and focused face, always on the lookout for the right decision. If the camera is definitely placed at the side of its actor (not avoiding certain clichés of the “naturalist” genre, such as these recurring shots of the neck, when the rhythm of the shot can only be that of the character who advances), the script seems to progress on automatic pilot, moving away from its documentary substrate to unnecessarily dramatize each step of Jesmark Scicluna’s journey. Nothing really ostentatious here, but it would have been necessary that the film took the risk of casting off more frankly the moorings of the fiction on subject to really cause the emergence of its character.
Luzzu by Alex Camilleri with Jesmark Scicluna, Michela Farrugia, David Scicluna… 1:34.
