The circus isn’t as romantic as it used to be. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey recently closed their tent for the final time after 146 years, the plight of animal performers is much too sad to ignore, and anyone with an affinity for peanuts can go to the ballpark instead. At the margins, though, there’s still a world of acrobats, bearded ladies, and lion tamers trekking from town to town as they eke out an existence at risk of fading away entirely — a world given beautiful expression in “Mister Universo.”
Not since “Big Fish” have we seen this world onscreen in such vivid detail, though Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s scope isn’t as grandiose or fantastical as Tim Burton’s. A docudrama that in its early scenes feels like a documentary — the co-directors have a nonfiction background, and the actors are actual carnival performers — the film plays...
Not since “Big Fish” have we seen this world onscreen in such vivid detail, though Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s scope isn’t as grandiose or fantastical as Tim Burton’s. A docudrama that in its early scenes feels like a documentary — the co-directors have a nonfiction background, and the actors are actual carnival performers — the film plays...
- 7/25/2017
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s Mister Universo, competing in Locarno, is "a social realist docufiction-cum-road movie," writes Giovanni Marchini Camia in a dispatch to Filmmaker. It "follows the lion tamer Tairo, who played the friendly neighbor in the exquisite La Pivellina, in his attempt to locate the strongman and one-time Mr. Universe Arthur Robin." The circus is "a constitutive element of early (Soviet) cinema," adds Celluloid Liberation Front in the Notebook. Charles Chaplin "made a film in its honor and Federico Fellini elevated it to existential metaphor." We're collecting reviews as they come in. » - David Hudson...
- 8/10/2016
- Keyframe
Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s Mister Universo, competing in Locarno, is "a social realist docufiction-cum-road movie," writes Giovanni Marchini Camia in a dispatch to Filmmaker. It "follows the lion tamer Tairo, who played the friendly neighbor in the exquisite La Pivellina, in his attempt to locate the strongman and one-time Mr. Universe Arthur Robin." The circus is "a constitutive element of early (Soviet) cinema," adds Celluloid Liberation Front in the Notebook. Charles Chaplin "made a film in its honor and Federico Fellini elevated it to existential metaphor." We're collecting reviews as they come in. » - David Hudson...
- 8/10/2016
- Fandor: Keyframe
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