A Sicilian Dream ***
Dir: Philip Walsh.
With: Francesco Da Mosto, Alain de Cadanet. 74 mins. Cert: PG
This feature spin-off
from Francesco Da Mosto’s small-screen primers on Italian life documents the
Targa Florio, formerly the world’s longest-running road race, deploying a double-pronged
approach. The genial, silver-haired Da Mosto – more Rod Liddle than Clarkson –
potters around the Sicilian villages the cars once hared through; his
interviews are intercut with reconstructions centred on Vincenzo Florio, the
race’s founder and Bernie Ecclestone of his day. An early scene of Da Mosto and
co-pilot Alain de Cadanet poring over the dashboard of a vintage Peugeot
suggests it’s been compiled with specialist audiences in mind, but it stays
lively, interrupting its archive material with trips to a Targa-themed model
village and a self-appointed, somewhat self-aggrandising race cobbler.
Comparable characters and legends pop up out of the scrub on the route’s every
bend: there’s a juicy anecdote about Enzo Ferrari, a baroness and a stuck lift,
although it doesn’t turn out quite as you may imagine.
A Sicilian Dream opens in selected cinemas from today.
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