“Life is not a rehearsal” goes the motivational quote. In other words: seize the day. Try telling that to the ragtag band of young actors putting together an experimental stage production in Nanni Moretti’s I Am Self Sufficient (Io sono un autarchico, 1976). Permanently distracted, often napping in a fug of cigarette smoke, these friends are as unmotivated by their Beckettian show as they are in the rest of their lives. Proper jobs are always looming on the horizon as they spend their days drinking, discussing politics, playing Subbuteo and deciding which movie to see next.
The earnest director, Fabio, decides they need to leave their Rome apartments for a bonding exercise, camping in the great outdoors. “Without abs, you can’t be avant garde!” he declares as the gang struggle through push-ups as if training for extreme sports not fringe theatre. Moretti’s long shot of these actors, united in disdain for their director and wearily finding a path through the hills in the Italian sunshine, is one of the funniest sights in a film that often feels like one giant shrug at life.
Moretti was 23 when he directed his own script for this debut feature, shot on Super 8 film. He plays one of these reluctant actors, Michele, an alter ego he resumed in several movies, eventually giving the character his mother’s birth name of Apicella. His co-stars in I Am Self Sufficient – including Fabio Traversa, Giorgio Viterbo and Paolo Zaccagnini – became a stock company, reappearing as characters sharing their first names. In a case of life definitely not imitating art, this tale of a pretentious shoestring theatre disaster is an assured low-budget film whose playful skits are delivered with comic precision.
When Michele first appears, his wife is about to leave him so he shamelessly directs his young son into acting sad in front of her. Whether it’s a bid to make her stay – or just make her feel bad – is never entirely clear. None of the film’s characters are particularly likable. But there is a constant melancholia beneath these anarchic vignettes, punctuated with surprising bursts of music (by Moretti’s frequent composer Franco Piersanti) and explosions of frustrated rage – a recurring feature of Moretti’s early comedies.
Fabio has found it hard to round up his friends for this theatrical venture after what happened last time. “Aren’t you ashamed?” one of them asks. “We looked like fools!” He talks meanderingly of Artaud and Bataille, as well as Beckett, in imagining a theatre that will be “a monument to contradictions”. Fringe cliches abound in this almost entirely male company led by a brooding director sporting itchy rollnecks, a serious beard and a sombre expression. Everyone is at least faintly ridiculous, including the all-powerful critic who prattles on in his book-lined study when Fabio calls him up to invite him to the show.
The film is packed with a variety of jokes: satire, physical humour, sight gags, quips and knowing asides to the audience. In one scene, Michele calls his father to inquire about his monthly cheque – just in case, he says, anyone watching is wondering how he pays the bills. There is a nice line in comedic phone calls where we only hear one side of the conversation and can easily imagine the responses. When Michele is recruited for the show by Fabio he has the temerity to ask if there may be a small fee. Before he’s managed to finish the sentence, he is fighting off a torrent of abuse from the director.
The film’s title, which has been read as part of its riposte to totalitarianism, is also quite the statement of auteurship from an actor, writer and director at the start of his career. Michele is frequently dismissed as a navel-gazer, interested only in himself, and in doing so Moretti pre-empts similar criticism for his string of semi-autobiographical films. In Golden Dreams (Sogni d’Oro, 1981) Michele is a film director who has just made a movie about young people and is lambasted for only making intellectual pictures about his middle-class circle. In an ongoing gag he is criticised at Q&As by an audience member who asks what a labourer in Basilicata would make of his film at the end of an honest day’s work. Is all of this auteurism or onanism? It’s no mistake that, in I Am Self Sufficient, Michele is seen masturbating in the bath at home before appearing in a bathtub scene in Fabio’s ridiculous play.
Unlike Annie Griffin’s Festival, which shows the heart behind risible Edinburgh fringe productions, Moretti’s film lampoons theatre without also celebrating it. Michele’s son is seen playing with a toy theatre of a castle but we are a long way from Fanny and Alexander – there is never a feeling that Michele is seriously invested in the stage. Like Moretti, his true love is the cinema; the theatre here is a joke – but a funny one nonetheless.
