Tommaso

In Abel Ferrara’s latest feature, presented in Cannes as a Special Screening, Tommaso (Willem Dafoe) is introduced perfecting his Italian-language skills with a local tutor. Tommaso is not only a little older than your usual student, but also already pretty fluent, able to have a regular conversation with ease and even enthusiasm. Right off the top, Ferrara and Dafoe paint an irresistible picture of a kind and curious outsider, eager to learn about the European country he lives in so as to better fit in, and smiling and cracking jokes at every opportunity: the opposite of an ugly American.

In these first scenes, Tommaso appears as goodness incarnate. At his regular