DEAR DIARY ("Caro Diario", 1993)

Not real, not fake - just a bit "off." This month, we're strapping on our vespa helmets and embarking on a leisurely tour across Italy with the quirky, jovial, slightly neurotic filmmaker Nanni Moretti as our tour guide. Join us as we peek at the pages of the filmmaker's pseudo-documentary approach to cinematic journaling...

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DEAR DIARY ("Caro Diario", 1993)
Dir. by Nanni Moretti
Available to rent on Amazon Prime, YouTube, or AppleTV.

Sometimes your own thoughts are the best travel companions. After a career of playing versions of himself in his fiction films, the puckish director Nanni Moretti here strips away the pretense. In Caro Diario, the filmmaker turns the camera into his personal pen as tells the story of his own wandering journeys across the Italian peninsula, presented as a slightly tongue-in-cheek faux-documentary. Set against Moretti's own intimate, philosophical, and more-often-than-not self-satirizing musings, the three vignettes (diary entries?) that make up the film's playful perambulations present an image of the modern world as a strange, silly, and poignant place, composed of small absurdities and great beauties no matter where one goes. That's life, no?

A lackadaisical adventure led by a fourth-wall-breaking tour guide, Moretti's film has the surreal self-reflexivity and wry humor of a Woody Allen film... at a much more Mediterranean pace. Let's talk about it!

*As always, this is a movie discussion group—we invite you to watch the film on your own ahead of time, and come ready to discuss.*