Ida Dalser was Mussolini's first wife. She had a son (also Benito) by him. This film is her story: how she was abandoned by Mussolini and later interned in a Mad House and treated as a paranoiac. She was physically restrained and denied access to her son who was in the custody of his aunt and uncle. Is she the victim of a conspiracy or a victim of her own delusions? The film is powerfully constructed and the result is effective and compelling. While the dialogue is minimal, authentic newsreel and music carry the narrative through. The acting is convincing: Ida provokes our frustration, anger and sympathy. She is a strong character yet unable to release herself from the hold Mussolini has on her past. At times lucid, otherwise delusional. Sometimes absurdly stubborn, yet immensely fragile and desperate.

Unfortunately the actor playing Mussolini did not physically resemble the Mussolini in the newsreel, which seemed confusing at times but the scenes where Mussolini's son impersonates his father in front of a group of students and then later in the asylum were brilliant.

In competition for 2009's Palme d'Or, Vincere is a new film by Marco Bellocchio. It is set in the early 20th century in Italy, during a dangerous time of oppression and political revolution, which cumulated in the evil that was Fascism. The story is not about the horrors of Fascism per se or how it rose to become an ideology matched in its ghastliness only by Nazism, but of its dictator Benito Mussolini and his private life.

Vincere tells the true story of Mussolini (Filippo Timi) and Ida Dalser (Giovana Mezzogiorno), his secret lover whom he had a passionate but somewhat sordid affair with. In the film, Dalser gives birth to a son who is taken away from her. She is also sent to a mental institution for claiming that she is the "rightful wife" of Mussolini; the latter is married and denies the affair with Dalser.

Much of Vincere revolves around Dalser, whom is portrayed as a sympathetic figure, a person who loved and trusted Mussolini with all her heart, but ended up suffering the ignominy of being a "prisoner of a vile dictator". Mezzogiorno's performance is noteworthy. She switches effortlessly from a seductive woman who oozes sexual allure (she appears completely nude in a number of shots) to a frustrated person devoid of the freedom to pursue personal justice.

Timi also plays Mussolini with a fierce affection. But he fizzles out in the second half of the picture after Bellocchio rightly gives more screen time to Mezzogiorno. Even though the core of Vincere rests upon the relationship (or lack of) between Mussolini and Dalser, the political themes of the film remain in the consciousness of the viewer throughout.

Bellocchio inserts old black-and-white footages of history into the film, drawing our attention to the fervent and violent political and nationalistic attitudes of that era. The shouts of "Italia! Italia!" and the real Mussolini giving a powerful speech about war are, at the very least, disquieting. Matched with a loud, rousing score with lots of brass and choir, the film is quite strong in creating a mood of paranoia.

Vincere somewhat ends too quickly. Even for a film that is slightly longer than two hours, it seems like more exposition is warranted and would have been greeted more positively than not. Thus, the film feels incomplete but it is still a well-made film with its cinematography, in particular, an aspect to appreciate.

It may seem ironic but in Vincere's most emotional sequence, Bellocchio uses clips from Chaplin's The Kid (1921). In The Kid, Chaplin's character is devastated when his young son is taken away from him by the state. Dalser, who watches the film in an open-air screening, draws strength from it in the hope that she will one day see her son again.

Bellocchio's Vincere is a decent entry into the Palme d'Or selection, but it is by no means a stunning piece of cinema. The private story of Mussolini (or rather Dalser's) is compelling enough to last the two hours, though it would have been better received with a more complete approach.

SCORE: 7.5/10 (www.filmnomenon.blogspot.com) All rights reserved!

Bellocchio's latest is yet another look at a controversial Italian political figure, Benito Mussolini; however, it deals with a phase of his life which was kept 'in the shadows' for a great many years – the dictator's first marriage, which even yielded him a son! As was the case with GOOD MORNING, NIGHT (2003) – in which the film-maker had treated the abduction and execution of ex-Prime Minister Aldo Moro – the politician emerges not to be the central figure after all (remaining, similarly, little more than a cipher); here, in fact, the protagonist is Mussolini's secreted – or, more precisely, rejected – wife, who even winds up in a mental institution (a fate which also befalls their offspring, where both would die eventually)! The meticulous period reconstruction (and emphatic score) was to be expected, yet the human drama – and, by extension, the fine leading performances of Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Fabrizio Timi – is ultimately what renders the movie compelling; interestingly, while Mussolini as an older man is shown only via authentic newsreel footage, Timi plays both father and son as a young adult! Needless to say, the director distances himself from the Fascist fervor which had gripped his nation in those pivotal war years – choosing to depict Mussolini as godless (the film begins with him defying the Almighty to strike him down) and inhuman (both in the treatment of his first family and in his animalistic sexual prowess: the latter scenes, of which there a few, would otherwise have no discernible point) and even goes so far as to ridicule him by having son repeatedly caricature father's famously arrogant mannerisms while speechifying (with this in mind, the title – which translates to "Winning" – is clearly ironic, since what it presents is anything but the correct fighting spirit)!