Saint Anger

YOUR SILENT FACE: Ernesto (Sergio Castellitto) beneath the image of his would-be saintly mother.

A beatification in the family piques a painter's ire in My Mother's Smile.

by Sam Adams

Most believers take comfort in the knowledge that God is everywhere, but the notion can easily be terrifying. "If he's everywhere, I'm not free even for a second," the young Leonardo (Alberto Mondini) says to his mother as Marco Bellocchio's My Mother's Smile opens. Free to do what, she wonders. "To be alone. To think alone."

Leonardo's father, Ernesto (Sergio Castellitto), a painter and illustrator, has realized his son's wish: Separated from his wife, divorced from his faith, he lives, and thinks, alone. "In unused space, you unleash your talent," his son's religion teacher (Chiara Conti) says of his painting; the same goes for Ernesto's life. Preferring principled uncertainty to pragmatic faith, he deliberately, if painfully, rejects Catholicism, implicitly reasoning that faith based on "insurance" (a frequently used term) is no faith at all.

Ernesto thinks he is through with the church, but the church has other ideas. A cardinal's secretary drops by Ernesto's spacious, softly lit flat one morning unannounced and informs him that Ernesto's mother has been proposed for sainthood; his testimony, as that of a nonbeliever, would be particularly compelling. At first, Ernesto is merely baffled, but resentment grows as he learns his mother's canonization has been in the works for years, the brainchild of an impious aunt (Piera Degli Espositi) who hopes to up the family's social standing. When Ernesto visits her, she's staging a re-creation of his mother's supposed martyrdom at the hands of his mentally ill brother, a photo that will doubtless serve as part of a campaign that already includes a Web site and several backroom deals.

Although Bellocchio skewers those who would manipulate the church for their own ends, My Mother's Smile (whose Italian title is The Religion Hour) isn't anti-clerical, and its satire is tinged with anguish. As his resentment peaks, Ernesto lashes out at his late mother's "indifferent, lethal smile, saying she owns you because she gave birth to you" — a complaint directed at heavenly as well as earthly forebears. Paradoxically, given his preference for self-determination, he laments growing up in a fog of pious uncertainty. "You don't ask a child, "What do you want?"' he says. ""Don't blaspheme' — fine, then what?"

Given Ernesto's dilemma, it's fitting that My Mother's Smile is a jumble of tones and textures, ranging from the naturalist to the demi-surrealist, accompanied by the jarring blasts of Riccardo Giagni's score. Bellocchio (Devil in the Flesh, Fists in the Pocket) is a European master in the midst of a Stateside revival sparked by his last few films, although it's been a long time since Smile's 2002 premiere. At once major and offhand, My Mother's Smile feels like a manifesto written in code, a present for Bellocchio's followers and an enticement for new ones.

recommended My Mother's Smile Written and directed by Marco Bellocchio A New Yorker release Opens Friday at Ritz at the Bourse