‘Padre Pio’ Review: A Movie in Need of a Miracle That Never Comes

We at the moment are within the month of June, so the concept of Shia LaBeouf within the title function of a fictionalized biography of the revered and controversial Italian cleric Padre Pio directed by Abel Ferrara has a low chance of being some sort of April Fool’s joke. This is an actual film. And alas, an often rank one.

Now Ferrara hasn’t even tried a traditional biopic of the person born Francesco Forgione on the finish of the nineteenth century, and who, based on some accounts, began displaying stigmata after an illness-plagued childhood. And that’s to his credit score. Rather, he’s tried a generally Brechtian consideration of the nodes of political historical past and spirituality.

The film is about within the Italy between two world wars, throughout which era Pio was a priest in San Giovanni Rotondo, the place he spent his whole life. (And the place a 1920 Fascist-initiated bloodbath of civilians came about; the film ends with an outline of it.) Ferrara’s narrative toggles between Padre Pio’s cloistered, spiritually tormented existence and the Socialist and Fascist factions competing to remodel Italy on the time.

LaBeouf essays a reasonably, let’s say, up to date Pio. And fully sinks the image. Early within the film Pio is requested by an interrogator concerning the “countless” girls “you had your narcissistic way with.” Who’s below scrutiny right here, the character, or LaBeouf himself, who’s just lately confronted allegations of sexual abuse from multiple lady? Later, a male character performed by Asia Argento confesses feeling lust for his personal daughter, and LaBeouf’s Pio, totally callow regardless of his prodigious beard, tells him to shut-the-you-know-what-up. He detaches the film from the Brechtian and lands it firmly within the territory of “improv scene workshop gone horribly wrong.”

Padre Pio
Rated R for themes, violence, Shia LaBeouf’s language. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters.