Double Concerto

By R.S.

DEAR MAESTRO Directed and Written by Luciano Odorisio

Andrea (Adalberto Maria Merli) left home to make good and made soso; he conducts and composes for television in Milan. Francesco (Michele Placido) stayed home and did about the same--though he thinks he did worse--teaching music and conducting the choir. But at 40, the lifelong friends still have some ambition left and a last chance to exercise it.

Both are logical candidates for the post of musical director if Chieti, their birthplace in Abruzzi, revives the defunct town symphony as a tourist attraction. Francesco's desperation for the job is the more comically visible, and his wife (Giuliana De Sio) tries to advance his cause by sleeping with a town councilor. Less obviously needy, Andrea pursues the job with a worldly resignation that contrasts to good dramatic effect with his rival's cookie-tossing eagerness for it. Luciano Odorisio's Dear Maestro is not much to look at, but it is shrewd in its examination of how envious small-town gossip exacerbates a contest that neither participant wants, compassionate about men standing on the cusp of middle age, still scrambling to keep their dreams glimmering, and pleasingly ironic in the way it works out its story. --R.s.