The opening night presentation of the Lavazza Italian Film Festival is MARINA, the biopic of singer, songwriter, accordion player Rocco Granata who had the phenomenal one hit wonder with the song that lends the film its title back in 1959.

Part Jersey Boys part La Bamba, MARINA charts the rise of stubborn squeeze box maestro Granata after his family left war ravaged Calabria to make a better life in the coalmines of Belgium.

Concertinaed into the musical story is the tried and true tale of the migrant experience, complete with the generational and cultural clash between father and son.

Papa is determined that his son never go down the coalmine and that he apply himself to his schooling rather than his intention to pursue a musical career. Mama, as usual, is the meat in the sandwich, trying to keep everybody happy.

Pop music being the playground of the young, there is of course, youthful infatuations, and again the course of true love does not run smooth when Rocco sets his sights on the daughter of a Flemish shopkeeper who regards Italian immigrants’ as the bottom rung on the social ladder.

Matteo Simoni gives a super energetic performance as the exuberant teenager intent on making a musical moniker for himself.

Sicilian thesp Luigi Lo Cascio is solid as the stock father trying to keep family and culture together in an unfamiliar surrounding while fellow Sicilian Donatella Finocchiaro is splendid as the peace keeping mum.

Evelien Bosmans is the suitably aloof heartthrob, Helena, who inspires Rocco’s compositions and watch out for a cameo by the real Rocco Granata as a squeezebox salesman.

Director Stijn Coninx seems set on a mission to examine and explore one hit wonders, his previous picture, Soeur Sourire, being a portrait of the so called singing nun, Jeanine Deckers. One wonders if he is trawling the Eurovision annals to uncover his next project.

The Lavazza Italian Film Festival runs September 18 – October 12 spread liberally across three cinemas – Norton Street, Leichardt, Verona, Paddington, and the Chauvel, Paddington.

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