Let’s hope there was a giant extractor fan on the set of “The Fire Within You,” because the stench of burnt oil must have been overwhelming. It’s not only food that gets blistered in Edoardo De Angelis’ overwrought screaming match, which makes one envious of the wax Odysseus had handy to plug up his sailors’ ears. In his case, the sounds were of sirens, whereas the characters here would give the harpies a run for their money, making them seem almost dulcet-toned in comparison. Set in a family’s apartment on Christmas Eve and featuring a mother so monstrous not even the Ancient Greeks could have conjured her up, one can only imagine what kind of pressure was on the Venice Film Festival to place it in competition.
“La mamma è sempre la mamma” is a common Italian expression — “the mother is always the mother” — and her sacred position in the nation’s psyche, tied of course to a couple of millennia spent worshiping the Virgin Mary, renders her an inviolable figure. No matter how nasty she may be, no matter how unfit she is to be a mother, her position is untouchable. For Italian audiences, that means Angela (Vanessa Scalera) can spew bile nonstop, but there’s no question her children will stick by her. For most everyone else, it’s impossible to escape the thought that if they’ve put up with this termagant for so many years, they deserve every moment together. But why drag us into it?
