Re: For The Love Of A Sheep
Oh, I just remembered! Anyone see Jim Jarmusch's "Night on Earth"? It is a series of five vignettes of taxi drivers and their passengers; one takes place in LA, one in NY, one in France, one in Finland, and one in Italy.
The Italian vignette, with Robert Benigni (of "Life is Beautiful") is absolutely hysterical. It's worth renting the whole film (it's on video) just for that one segment.
Anyway, Benigni is this zany (of course!)Roman cabbie, who wears sunglasses at night, goes careening up one-way streets the wrong way, etc., and finally picks up a priest (whom he insists on calling "Cardinal"). Benigni is overwhelmed at having a cleric in his cab, and thinks this is a glorious opportunity to say Confession.
The priest waves Benigni away, tries to discourage him, but he can't stop the flow of The Confession, which, of course, is entirely about Benigni's love life, accompanied by all the appropriate Italianate gestures, body language, and facial expressions. Meanwhile, the priest starts having a heart attack. You can't quite tell (I don't think you are supposed to) whether it is from hearing this ribald confession, or whether it would have happened anyway.
Anyway, Benigni's first experience is with a pumpkin. [First death rattle.] The second experience is with a higher order of life -- you guessed it -- a sheep! He waxes eloquent on the beauty, kindness, and charm of that little sheep, but the relationship ends in tragedy. Apparently, FrouFrou, or whatever her name is, gets killed and eaten. [Second death rattle.] The final experience is with his brother's wife, which really does the priest in. When Benigni turns around to get absolution, the priest is stone cold dead. So Benigni carefully takes the priest out of the taxi, props him up on a bench, and drives off singing an aria. Melancholy ending.
But if that berserk monologue is so funny just with subtitles (especially the passage about FrouFrou), it must be side-splitting for those who understand Italian. Anyway, rent it!
Joan
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