ROME - A lighthearted Christmas comedy film that stormed Italian
box offices this winter is the vehicle for an unusual sponsor: a funeral
home.
It is a sign of how Italian cinema,
traditionally reliant on public funds that have halved since the
2007-2008 financial crisis, is seeking different sources of support. And
its new sponsors often want something in return.
In an advertising deal the Rome company proudly describes as
unprecedented, Taffo Funerals paid to be a central plot device in "The
Worst Christmas of my Life", which hinges on a main character who is
mistakenly believed to have died.
The product
placement becomes a punch line when the funeral home manager telephones
the hero and soberly intones: "Taffo, funerals since 1940." The film is
the highest-grossing Italian film this season.
The placement has prompted some hand-wringing in Italy, once famous for
some of the world's greatest works of film and the home of directors
Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Vittorio de Sica and Sergio
Leone.
"It's certainly not in great taste, but
every film has these advertisements now," said fur-coated Gabriela
Rossi, 73, as she left a Rome cinema after watching the movie. "But I'm
not sure it will work. I don't think that, in a moment of grief, I will
remember the name of a funeral home I saw in a film!"
Embedded advertising has long been a fixture in international cinema.
Dutch beer brand Heineken's sponsorship of the latest James Bond
blockbuster sparked concern among fans that the hero's time-honored
tipple of a martini "shaken, not stirred" had been replaced.
But in Italy, product placements have become increasingly prominent
since a 50 percent drop in public funding for films in the past five
years, according to the head of Turin's film funding board, Steve Della
Casa.
"Whoever gives money to a film wants to
have their say," Della Casa told Reuters. "But this is normal. We have
had mafiosi making films, racists, fascists... you can't make films
without money."
In some cases, the product has become the film's raison d'etre.
The beautiful but often overlooked region of Basilicata spent 350,000
euros ($455,000) of a European Union Regional Development Fund to pay
for a film, 2010's "Basilicata Coast to Coast", to promote itself.
The name of the comedy about a group of musicians on a road trip
stresses Basilicata's selling point as the only Italian region with
coasts on two different seas. It grossed $4.6 million at the box office,
a respectable return for Italy, making it the 16th most successful
Italian film that year.
And "Benvenuti al Sud", a
remake of French film "Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis" about a post office
worker transferred to Italy's south, became the occasion for the
privatised Italian postal service to introduce viewers to its new ATM
card service, Postamat.
"My friend opened a
Postamat account. Now his pension is paid to the account and he can
withdraw it conveniently," declares one character in the 2010 film,
whose success at Italian box offices was second only to James Cameron's
"Avatar".
Changing Italian cinema
The demise of Cinecitta film studios, which once gave Rome the moniker
"Hollywood on the Tiber," is seen as symbolic of a change in Italian
cinema. Demonstrators occupied the studios for several months this year
to protest a plan to redevelop the site to include a theme park and
luxury hotel.
While funding remains tight,
lighthearted comedies like The Worst Christmas of my Life that are
commercially successful in the home market are those most favored by
investors, the film's director Alessandro Genovesi told Reuters.
"In this moment I am obliged to make commercial films that have big
economic returns," Genovesi said. "There is a growing taste for pure
escapism... this has to do with the historic moment we are living. A
moment of suffering, of economic malaise."
Italian films that do well domestically are quite different to those that succeed abroad.
Perhaps the most internationally successful Italian film of recent
years, 2008's "Gomorrah", a mafia tale that won the Grand Prix at the
Cannes Film Festival, in Italy took less than half the box office
receipts of "Christmas in Rio", the 12th sequel of the raunchy slapstick
"Christmas in" series.
Alessandro Taffo of
Taffo Funerals said it was a proud moment when he heard the name of the
family business announced in his local cinema.
"Funeral homes are often portrayed as incompetent in films. This was a
chance for us to show our business in a good light," Taffo told Reuters.
"We are absolutely delighted." — Reuters
0 comments:
Post a Comment