Working conditions at the ILVA steel company in Taranto in the 1990s provide the inspiration for actor Michele Riondino's directorial debut, Palazzina LAF. With an acronym meaning `Laminatoio a freddo' (which translates as `cold rolling mill'), this is the latest offering from the ever-astute folk at CinemaItaliaUK and Riondino will hold a Q&A session after the screening at the Regent Street Cinema on Sunday 24 November.
It's 1997 and Caterino Lamanna (Michele Riondino) works on the coke oven battery at the recently privatised ILVA steel plant in Taranto. Girlfriend Anna (Eva Cela)is forever giving him grief about going out, but he is content to take the bus every day and clean the coils, even though several men at the plant have died through accidents and work-related cancer. Union rep Renato Morra (Fulvio Pepe) tries to organise a strike to protest about safety conditions and new rosters, but Caterino isn't a political animal.
While waiting at the bus stop, he is offered a lift by personnel manager, Giancarlo Basile (Elio Germano), who asks after Caterino's eminent uncle. He also suggests that he need not slave away on the battery all his life and offers him the post of foreman and a company car if he keeps tabs on the union activity on the shop floor.
In order to throw his workmates off the scent, Caterino gets a black eye resisting the security at a strike meeting and buddies up with Aldo Romanazzi (Michele Sinisi), who is also being offered a new role by Basile and his sneering superior, Moretti (Paolo Pierobon). Anna is thrilled by Caterino's sudden good fortune and hints that they should go steady.
While they're out driving, however, they see Romanazzi arguing with a cop at a traffic light and he forgets his licence after Caterino sorts things out. When he tries to return it, he discovers that Romanazzi has been transferred to Palazzina LAF and he is so envious of the fact that nobody there does a stroke of work that he asks Basile to transfer him in return for more information on what Romanazzi and Morra are cooking up with a lawyer in town.
Finding himself an office, Caterino steers clear of the others, as they play cards or cook to keep themselves occupied. When Morra comes to report on a law suite, Caterino meets Basile in a bar to pass on the news. He persuades his ailing uncle to let him take over his town apartment so that he can move off what remains of the small family farm (where the sheep are dying from poisoned grass). When the security guards come to confiscate all the LAF leisure equipment, no one suspects Caterino of being the informant, even though he doesn't seem concerned that his fellow inmates fear going stir crazy with nothing to do.
The next day, Basile's secretary, Rosalba Liaci (Marina Limosani) fetches up in LAF for making a mistake on a contract. Caterino is consoling her when Basile arrives and admonishes them all for being so idle when there are jobs available at the plant. He ticks off Franco Orlando (Gianni D'Addario) for burping down phone at him each lunchtime (even though the line isn't connected) and offers him and others work for which they are not qualified, even though they are all skilled in their chosen fields. When Morra comes to put the union case, Basile humiliates him by revealing that he had signed up to such a strategy in a recent agreement and everyone loses faith in the rep's ability to help their cause when he admits that the lawyer has dropped their case.
When Romanazzi invites Caterino to supper with Morra and some of their other workmates, he shows them an abusive flyer that Basile had taken objection to. Morra knows that they haven't been circulated yet and suspects that Caterino is the mole. But he is swept off the premises by security the next day after the template was found on his computer and the PC expert who planted it tells Caterino that he has had enough of spying, as Basile is getting out of control.
When they plan to hand a letter to the archbishop when he comes to say mass at the mill, one of the quieter members of the LAF exiles dictates the contents and Tiziana Lagioia (Vanessa Scalera) volunteers to hand it over. However, Caterino takes a rough draft from the bin and hands it to Basile, who has the LAF contingent closely guarded during the service. When Rosalba tries to pass on the missive at communion, Basile intimidates her before taking the host with a demonic grin.
He has Rosalba fired and, when Caterino comes to protest (having had a nightmare about being Judas in a Holy Week procession through the town), he discovers that someone had reported ILVA to the public prosecutor (Anna Ferruzzo), who comes to LAF and is amazed to find 79 lost souls shuffling on to the corridor to greet her. After she interviews people at the plant, including Basile and Moretti, she presses a case against the company and everyone is aghast when Caterino takes the stand and boasts that he was helping management save ILVA by reporting on activities that could damage the firm. His LAF colleagues are appalled and Anna leaves the courtroom in disgust, as he admits being in cahoots with Basile, but remains clueless that he has done anything wrong, even when the judge advises him to get a lawyer.
Although he goes back to ILVA and rejoins the non-skilled workforce, Caterino has nowhere to go but the LAF building. He keeps coffee and pasta in his locker and a newcomer sees him coughing badly while he shaves in the washroom. Leaving Caterino sat in the office with the red flowers grown in pots on the window still from seeds given to him by Rosalba, he stares blankly into the distance, as captions describe how ILVA was found guilty of workplace violence and how the right to work is still enshrined in the Italian constitution.
Following on from Argentinian documentarist Victor Cruz's Taranto (2021), this is the second film about the ILVA scandal. But Michele Riondino is on familiar ground, as he hails from the Apulian city and his father worked at the plant. Writing with Maurizio Braucci, he also roots the action in Alessandro Leogrande's book, Fumo sulla città, which provided a stark insight into Taranto's recent history.
Although Caterino resembles a Sacha Baron Cohen creation, he has clearly been modelled on Lulù Massa, the exemplary employee played by Gian Maria Volontè in Elio Petri's The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1972), who is adored by the bosses and loathed by his colleagues and the union activists and students hoping to bring about change at the factory where Lulù has worked for half his life.
This won the Palme d'or at Cannes and Palazzina LAF also had a good night at the 69th David di Donatello Awards, as Riondino and Elio Germano took Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, while Riondino was also nominated for his screenplay and for Best New Director. The film even won the prize for Best Song with Diodato's `La mia terra'.
The leads are excellent, as Germano exploits Riondino's ignorance, indolence, and moral indifference to prevent the union from exposing the nefarious management practices. But the ensemble work is equally impressive, as distinctive characters are deftly sketched within the restricted screen time afforded by a script that opts not to delve too deeply into the ethical, social, and political complexities of the situation.
Cinematographer Claudio Cofrancesco also makes fine use of the industrial architecture and the views showing how much the plant dominates the skyline. The closing archive footage shows how closely production designer Sabrina Balestra recreated the LAF environment, while Teho Teardo's score puts a brass band spin on its Morriconean motifs. Moreover, it binds the film to another study of capitalism clashing with the community, Mark Herman's Brassed Off (1996).