The Adventures of Gigi the Law (Alessandro Comodin, 2022) (Patreon)

Following his well-liked (although unseen by me) Summer of Giacomo and his not quite as well-liked (and disliked by me) Happy Times Will Come Soon, Italian director Alessandro Comodin has produced his most accessible film to date, a meandering portrait of a genial cop (Pier Luigi Mecchia) who goes by the nickname Gigi. He is a sergeant, I believe, part of a small police force in a small town in Northern Italy. For most of the film, Gigi is driving around, chatting up the locals, getting into the occasional argument, and above all, using his squad car radio to shamelessly flirt with Paola, the new dispatch operator who is described a few times but who we pointedly never see.

Unless a viewer is intimately acquainted with Italian police procedure, one is unlikely to recognize that this is a documentary, or that Comodin at least believes so. Like certain works by Kiarostami, Dumont, or Minervini, the actors in Gigi the Law are essentially playing themselves, and this or course poses the usual question regarding hybrid docs. How are Gigi and the others portraying themselves in light of the fact that camera are present? Even allowing that identity itself is just a role we play, how is that performance inflected with the introduction of cinema?

These theoretical questions might be more provocative if Gigi the Law were a more interesting film. Even as a slice-of-life bit of rural portraiture, Comodin's film is rather shapeless, and the cynical viewer might suspect that calling it a documentary is a way of giving the film permission for its slack construction. There are some identifiable scenes, such as the opening dialogue between Gigi and his neighbor. The unseen fellow complains to Gigi that his plants and trees are overgrown, and that one dying tree in particular threatens to fall on his house. Gigi tells the man to mind his own business, but this scene is most notable as an introduction to Mecchia's unique speech patterns and disposition. "You're a psychopath," he repeats, in his somewhat nasal timbre. "Don't worry about my life, you worry about yours."

Early on, Gigi and his first partner discover a suicide on the railroad tracks. A young man on his way to work found the body, and Gigi suspects that he knows more than he lets on. So Gigi tails him for awhile, even as one of his later partners (Annalisa Ferrari) warns him that he will get in trouble "just like last time." None of these conflicts ever really come to a head. Most of the time, Gigi and his colleagues are riding around in the car, pointing out "suspicious" characters and remarking on the weather. Given that the cop movie is a genre with certain expectations, Comodin seems committed to thwarting them. (Even Bruno Dumont's small-town cop in L'humanité had a murder to solve, and sometimes floated in midair.)

As it happens, Gigi is in fact Comodin's uncle. (Without press notes, you'd never know this.) The tone of Gigi the Law certainly makes sense in light of this, since Gigi is depicted as eccentric, irascible, but never less than charming. Even his continued banter with Paola, which borders sexual harassment at the very least, is treated as harmless and amusing. And although the film hints at some crisis in Gigi's past, that made him "the department scapegoat," this is never specified, so we are prevented from making our own judgments about him.

Watched with a critical eye, Gigi the Law might be understood as a picture of Italian masculinity and authority, problematic despite being perceived as culturally benign. Gigi is no boor, no Berlusconi. But as a cop, he is essentially the town busybody, watching and reporting and rendering judgments that just happen to have the force of the Law behind them. (Had this been an American film, Gigi would have undoubtedly been a Good Ol' Boy.) The liberals who simply want a kinder, gentler police force would hold Gigi up as an example of the ideal peace officer, the community member charged with maintaining safety on his own beat. On the other hand, if all cops are indeed bastards, Gigi the Law shows us the often unseen power of avuncular authority.