No Dogs or Italians Allowed

(Interdit aux chiens et aux italiens, Alain Ughetto, Italy/France, 2022)

The manual skills of a labouring grandfather are passed down to his grandson – who becomes not a farmer or a builder, but an animator.

Alain Ughetto’s second feature (after Jasmine in 2013) is a fond family chronicle told in an inventive and entertaining way: in painstaking stop-motion animation, using puppets and crafted objects.

But there is a touch of surrealism in this recreation of the past, since broccoli stand in for trees, and sugar cubes represent bricks.

And, because so much of the tale depends on hands, the filmmaker’s own hand makes frequent appearances in the set – interacting especially with his grandmother, Cesira.

Ughetto lays out an immortal, cyclical story of love and family, poverty and prosperity, accident and fortune. But the content moves well beyond sentimental nostalgia: two World Wars, the rise of fascism and the Spanish flu epidemic – among other momentous signs of the 20th century – all mark this sometimes tragic (but never solemn) reconstruction.

Above all, Ughetto traces the path of a cross-cultural migration: from Italy to France, as a tightly-knot community of workers finds itself exploited as a social class by State and Church alike, suffering a galling dose of racism along the way.

It is a rousing, life-affirming portrait.

© Adrian Martin 2 January 2023