In a week that saw the Berlin Film Festival and then the Baftas make headlines with stories that evolved by the day if not the hour, probably few in the media had the time or the energy to dive into Marco Bellocchio’s six-part miniseries Portobello, which made its streaming debut last weekend. Such bad timing could have been fatal for a theatrical release, but thankfully Bellocchio’s terrific crime drama is still available worldwide via HBO Max. It takes its time, features very specific — and very local — cultural references, but it pulls together for a breathtaking final episode that wraps up all the loose ends of what appears to be a highly complicated plot but actually isn’t. It’s all quite devastatingly simple.
There have always been miscarriages of justice, we know that. But then there’s what happened to TV presenter Enzo Tortora, a story so baroque and surreal it could only have happened in ’80s Italy. Like the poliziotteschi films of Fernando Di Leo (1932-2003), Portobello takes us to a country where the police, at best, are incompetent, and the criminal underworld has its tentacles in all walks of life. Which is why, when Tortora (Fabrizio Gifuni), a household name, is accused of dealing cocaine to his celebrity friends, he is arrested without question.
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The first two episodes of Bellocchio’s show were screened at the Venice Film Festival last year, but only the second is representative of the whole series. The opener takes us through Tortora’s meteoric rise as the host of hit weekend variety show Portobello. Taking its name from London’s market, the show pioneered the zoo-TV format in Italy, with viewers coming on to offer items, skills and even themselves (it featured a lonely-hearts slot). Millions of viewers tuned in, ever more by the week, even if just to see whether the night’s star guest could persuade the show’s parrot, also called Portobello, to say its own name.
These gaudy hijinks contrast with the dark, gloomy prison cell where Giovanni Pandico (Lino Musella) is incarcerated. Highly intelligent, Pandico is obsessed with Tortora; he tells his cellmate they communicate telepathically, and together they send a shipment of lace doilies to sell on the show. When the doilies go missing, Pandico demands payment, which Tortora believes to be extortion after Pandico is revealed to him to be a member of the New Organized Camorra. Terrified, Tortora settles the bill in full, but that will not put an end to the matter.
The minutiae of Tortora’s life at this time are crucial to the story that’s about to unfold. He’s not a perfect man — though estranged from his wife in what he calls “a moralistic Catholic country”, he is still close to her and their two daughters, even while he hides his mistress Francesca from the public eye. He has his addictions, too, craftily sniffing a substance later revealed to be nothing more than snuff. One thing he is clearly not, however, is a drug dealer or a Camorra associate. Nevertheless, when Pandico claims he is, Tortora is not only taken into custody but more such claims follow, each more outlandish than the last.
It’s astonishing that what happened to Tortora can so comfortably fill so many hours; as the baseless accusations pile up against him, the TV star even (briefly) becomes a member of the European Parliament, thereby fulfilling Martin Scorsese’s holy trifecta of crime, showbusiness and politics (Bellocchio’s view of religion is pretty clear in the ironic way he so regularly frames churches as a backdrop). It’s also a testament to Gifuni’s performance that Portobello never drags; a near dead-ringer for American star Frank Langella, Gifuni is a mesmerizing and steadily compelling presence throughout, while Musella, playing the vile, conniving and utterly insane Pandico, is an equally magnetic opponent.
Despite its daunting length, there’s no filler here — everything comes into play later, from the dancing Pulcinella clowns we see in the Portobello show, to a hypnotist whose act will be invoked at Tortora’s trial, and the lyrics of the cosy canzone “Simmo ’e Napule Paisá” (“We Are Countrymen from Naples”), which sings of “Those who’ve taken, taken, taken” and “Those who’ve given, given, given.” Even the very premise of the show Portobello reflects the transactional, exchange-and-mart nature of Italy’s legal system at the time, which now seems as theatrical and performative as its World Cup soccer team.
The most important thing about Bellochio’s film, however, is how it pays off, with an extraordinary finale that explains the seemingly inexplicable. The key lesson to learn from Portobello is not that bad things sometimes happen to good people but the ease with which bad-faith actors can make themselves heard when what they say aligns with what the authorities want to hear. This story exists in a time before smartphones, making Tortora all the more vulnerable, but the rise of AI and disinformation only makes this kind of injustice more likely to happen again.
Title: Portobello
Director: Marco Bellochio
Screenwriter: Marco Bellochio, Stefano Bises, Giordana Mari, Peppe Fiori, from the book Lettere a Francesca by Enzo Tortora
Cast: Fabrizio Gifuni, Lino Musella, Barbora Bobulova, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Federica Fracassi, Carlotta Gamba, Giada Fortini, Irene Maiorino, Giovanni Buselli
Distributor: HBO Max
Running time: 6 hrs (approx)