Don’t say mafia, say ’ndrangheta – the Calabrian crime network that is the subject of Francesco Munzi’s gripping drama, as sombre as its title suggests. This is a dynastic tale that gets more claustrophobic as it develops, as its web of vendetta-style recriminations closes in on the Carbone clan, goat farmers who have diversified into riskier and more profitable businesses.
The film focuses on the differences of character between the Carbone brothers: Luigi (Marco Leonardi), the hard man out in the field; urbane Rocco (Peppino Mazzotta), who lives a seemingly respectable bourgeois lifestyle in Milan; and older brother Luciano (Fabrizio Ferracane), who’d rather tend his herd than continue the old cycle of bloodshed. But when Luciano’s tearaway son makes a rebellious gesture, matters move inexorably towards an outcome that could be called operatic, if Munzi’s directing style weren’t so soberly economical.
Black Souls has themes in common with Matteo Garrone’s 2008 Neapolitan mob drama Gomorrah – but this very different film eschews both Garrone’s epic scale and his love of the scenically squalid. Instead we get an austere account of inter-family politics, set in a predominantly male milieu (although depicted as strong-willed, the Carbone women, frustratingly, are left in the background). The dialogue is largely in Calabrian dialect, and the film overall has the ring of unglamorous reality, set as it is in a southern Italy where the skies are grey and the pavements often black with rain.
