Italian actor Marcello Fonte, born in 1978 in southern Italy, landed his first lead with one of the most acclaimed world directors, Matteo Garrone, who won Cannes's Grand Jury Prize for his hit Gomorra in 2008. Fonte had been an extra in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002) and played small roles in Corpo Celeste (2011), The Intrusion (2017) and Il sono Tempesta (2018), during which time he also wrote and directed a film named Asino Vola (2015). Garrone took a chance by giving the role to an actor who was not yet established, calling Fonte “the modern-day Buster Keaton, almost a silent movie actor”. But Dogman, screened in El-Gouna Film Festival's (GFF) Out of Competition section, shows just how right Garrone had been. “How Garrone chose me was a coincidence. His casting director was at a rehearsal by my former prisoner theatre company talent scouting. It's a company that helps former prisoners make a fresh start and build their lives, and in this production one of the former prisoners had died so the director gave me his role. That suited me perfectly because I was living in the space as a janitor. And so I played the role, the casting director saw me and invited me to meet Garrone.” For Fonte, working with Garrone was a remarkable experience. “It feels like diving, you can feel very peaceful and you can listen to everything clearly, even far-away sounds. You can perceive everything and that gives you the opportunity to learn and absorb as much as possible from his talent. I felt there was some kind of amplification like when you're underwater, that's what working with Garrone feels like.” Dogman is set in a dim small neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples where Marcello (Marcello Fonte), a small, naïve-seeming man with strong facial features and big eyes, owns a dog parlour offering baths and grooming for dogs, most of which are much bigger than Marcello. The film opens to a fierce dog growling and showing its teeth while Marcello successfully attempts to calm it down enough for the bath. Marcello lives with his beloved daughter Alida (Alida Baldari Calabria) whom he often takes on diving trips. “I made my first dive in the film,” Fonte comments. “I had to learn how to dive, and so I took a course. I believe the cinema is about learning something new. The experience makes you learn new things and now I'm here in El Gouna and I can dive because of this film.” In the film, Marcello also plays football with his neighbours, among whom he is respected. But very discretely he is a coke dealer, which is how he ends up in trouble. The neighbourhood bully Simone, a similar character to Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (played brilliantly by Edoardo Pesce) buys cocaine from Marcello. Simone regularly picks fights with shopkeepers in order not to pay for what he's buying. He breaks the video game consoles and demands that the owner should give him money. And so instead of paying he forces Marcello to come along on a burglary, making him drive the van. Fonte When one of the burglars explains he had to lock the Chihuahua dog he found in the house in the freezer because it was making too much noise, Marcello's expression shows it all: he will return on his own to rescue the dog. But, giving in to the big man's threats, he capitulates again when Simone demands that he should let him dig through his parlour's wall in order to rob the jewellery shop next door. “It's a film about dignity,” Fonte says. Garrone's screenplay, co-written by Ugo Chiti, Maurizio Braucci and Massimo Guadioso, contrasts humans and dogs in order to highlight how the humans lack the dogs' dignity. When things go ugly following the jewellery shop robbery, though the police know Simone is the culprit, it is Marcello who goes to prison for a year. On coming out he looks for Simone to ask for his share of the loot. By now Marcello has lost his standing among his neighbours, the thing he values the most, and Garrone brilliantly shows how he sets off to take his revenge on Simone. “About the question of whether Marcello is a good man or an evil man,” Fonte said, “I always felt that he was a good man, he's good until the end, actually Marcello in the film wasn't looking for a revenge. The character did what it had to do to survive. He defends his dignity as he was humiliated in front of his daughter and his neighbours. And it's true, there were a lot of evil things he accepted out of fear. But until the end he was good.” Fonte's is not the only view possible, however: “Everyone can interpret the film in a different way, that's the thing about cinema, you can understand yourself through Marcello. You can understand your thoughts and emotions through Marcello. That's the reason the film is perceived in different ways all over the world. Everybody can see it through their own eyes.” Every aspect of the film was solid, however: the cinematography by Nicolaj Bruel picturing the grim neighbourhood, seemingly quiet and dull even though it's on the boil, the expressive music by Michele Braga, not to mention the acting. As Fonte happily points out, he wasn't the only actor to win a prize at Cannes. The Palm Dog Award also went to the canine cast of the film.
