Marcello Mio. 2024. France/Italy. Written and directed by Christophe Honoré. With Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Denueve, Fabrice Luchini, Melvin Poupaud. In French; English subtitles.. 120 min.
MoMA presents the North American premiere of Marcello Mio. A highlight of this year’s main competition at Cannes, the film reunites Chiara Mastroianni with the writer-director Christophe Honoré in a loving tribute to her father, Marcello Mastroianni, and is timed, it’s almost astonishing to believe, to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the actor’s birth. An affectionate homage with a soupçon of exorcism, Marcello Mio is as much about the present-day relationship between a famous mother (Catherine Deneuve, playing herself) and her daughter as it is a stab at independence by an actress seeking to escape the shadow of her royal cinema parentage. An acerbically funny Nicole Garcia, who instructs Chiara to be “more Mastroianni than Deneuve,” and a wistful Stefania Sandrelli add layers to this meta- comedy, in which Chiara tries to make her father’s most legendary roles entirely her own.