We’re now in the month of June, so the idea of Shia LaBeouf in the title role of a fictionalized biography of the revered and controversial Italian cleric Padre Pio, directed by Abel Ferrara, has a slim chance of being some kind of April Fool’s joke. This is a real movie. And unfortunately, the occasional rank one.
Now Ferrara hasn’t even tried to make a conventional biopic of the man born Francesco Forgione in the late 1800s who, according to some accounts, began to show stigmata after a disease-ridden childhood. And that does him credit. On the contrary, he has tried to make a sometimes Brechtian consideration of the intersections of political history and spirituality.
The film is set in the Italy between two world wars, during which time Pio was a priest in San Giovanni Rotondo, where he spent his entire life. (And where a fascist-initiated massacre of civilians took place in 1920; the film ends with a depiction of it.) Ferrara’s story switches back and forth between Padre Pio’s secluded, mentally anguished existence and the socialist and fascist factions vying for Italy at the time to transform.
LaBeouf writes a, shall we say, contemporary Pio. And completely sinks the picture. At the beginning of the film, Pio is asked by an interrogator about the “numerous” women “with whom you have had your narcissistic way”. Who is being scrutinized here, the character or LaBeouf himself, who was recently accused of sexual assault by more than one woman? Later, a male character played by Asia Argento confesses that he feels lust for his own daughter, and LaBeouf’s Pio, despite his prodigious beard, tells him to shut up. He detaches the film from the Brechtian one and lands it firmly in the territory of “improv scene-workshop gone horribly wrong.”
Father Pio
Rated R for themes, violence, Shia LaBeouf’s language. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theatres.