'The President's Cake', from Iraq comes an intense first work

This is the subject of 'The President's Cake', a film that won the important Caméra d'or title at last year's Cannes Film Festival, as the best debut presented on the Croisette.

The film seems to be based as much on Italia's neo-realism (and the links go primarily to the cinema of Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini, for their look at childhood) as on the Iranian poetics of authors such as Abbas Kiarostami, points of reference for a work that is only partly derivative and still able to offer a personal look at the story told.

What on the surface is just a task entrusted to a little girl is soon charged with deeper meanings. Obligation and devotion mingle with hope and dreams as the two children move through a world where every detail is watched and every action can have consequences.

A cake thus becomes an allegory of the weight of oppression, within a narrative laden with symbolic elements and character figures that become representations of something far more universal.

Perhaps there are a few acerbic passages during the viewing, but the film is nevertheless successful and capable of being original and intense to the right degree.

Also surprising is 'Gli occhi degli altri', a new film by Andrea De Sica (nephew of the aforementioned Vittorio), which takes a clear step forward compared to his two previous features, 'I figli della notte' and 'Non mi uccidere'.

Loosely inspired by the famous Casati Stampa murder, one of the most scandalous crime cases in post-war Italia, the film evokes the excess and decadence of an era with a modern, fierce and tense gaze. In the opulent and wild setting of a private island, owned by a rich and bored marquis, Elena's arrival marks the beginning of an overwhelming and dangerous relationship. Amid erotic role-play, voyeurism, complicity and borderline moral challenges, the protagonists plunge into a relationship dominated by the desire to be seen transgressing every rule.

It was by no means an easy starting point for Andrea De Sica to give life to this feature film, capable of powerfully reasoning on the most disturbing aspects of the male gaze to give life to a product that alternates baroque moments, perverse situations and a reflection on the society of the 1960s, with references that reach the present.

There are excesses and situations that are not always believable, but the operation manages to maintain a good balance from beginning to end, dosing the many ingredients appropriately and offering effective character writing.

Good work by the entire cast, in which Jasmine Trinca stands out in one of the best performances of her entire career.