Butler's Cinema Scene

Margherita Buy and Stefano Accorsi

“A FIVE STAR LIFE” My rating: B (Opens Aug. 28 at the Leawood)

85 minutes | MPAA rating: No MPAA rating

Irene (Margherita Buy) has what many of us would consider a dream job.  She works for a Rome-based outfit that rates luxury hotels.

This means that on any given working day she boards a plane for some exotic destination and checks into a hotel where the rooms can cost thousands per night.

One installed, she pulls on white gloves and goes over the room looking for dust. She has a checklist in her head of important details: Does the desk clerk look her in the eye? Is the bellhop’s uniform properly pressed?

A stopwatch lets her precisely time how long it takes for room service to respond. And Irene also watches how other guests are treated…like the proletarian honeymooners who clearly have never before enjoyed such posh circumstances and who are mostly ignored by the snooty staff.

Irene eats in the hotels’ celebrated restaurants, enjoys the floor shows in their night spots, and subjects herself to spa treatments.

All this is done in secret.  Irene is a sort of spy, a “mystery guest” who ultimately will turn in a report that determines how many cherished stars an establishment can boast of in the travel books.

Of course, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Writer/director Maria Sole Tognazzi and her radiant leading lady (Buy makes middle age look impossibly attractive) show that while Irene may spend her days in the lap of luxury, it’s been at the expense of her personal life.  A single woman constantly on the go has little time for relationships.

On those few days when she’s actually occupying her sparse, impersonal apartment, Irene checks in with her sister Silvia (Fabrizia Sacchi), whose marriage to a symphony musician has slid into chaste complacency. (Which doesn’t keep Silvia from harping about how Irene needs to find a man and have children of her own.)  Meanwhile Irene massages what maternal instincts she might have by doting on her two nieces.

Her best friend is Andreas (Steffano Accorsi), an organic produce wholesaler with whom she had an affair some 15 years earlier. The former lovers still turn to one another for mutual support (though not sex).  Andreas, for example, is dealing with impending fatherhood as the result of a one-night stand.  Now he’s determined to support his child even if he’s not committed to the mother.

This is, of course, honorable behavior, but it disarms Irene. If Andreas gets on the daddy track, will she lose her one emotionally intimate relationship?

Essentially plotless, “A Five Star Life” contrasts Irene’s glam-filled workdays with her otherwise pedestrian life. In an American film, she would probably end up with a man. Tognazzi, though, is much more ambivalent about her heroine’s ultimate fate.

A key moment is provided by Irene’s encounter in a Berlin hotel with an English author (Leslie Manville), whose ideas on female empowerment provide a new way of looking at life.

The film works for two reasons. First, Bay is an extremely watchable actress, attractive in a down-to-earth way that emphasizes Irene’s vulnerability. Though she has extensive credits, this is the first time I’ve seen her on screen. Hope it won’t be the last.

Second, the movie is beautiful. Arnoldo Catinari’s cinematography captures luxurious environments from Europe to North Africa. For those of us who could never afford such a life, it provides a delectable sneak peak at how the other one percent live.

| Robert W. Butler