Variety of fun on tap at the Panida

By PATRICIA WALKER

This week offers a variety for the community. A benefit rock concert, the Pend Oreille Arts Council’s season opener and a great film.

Love, death, cinema — they are all coming to the Panida this week with “Mia Madre”. The story of a movie director, Margherita (Margherita Buy), who, while shooting a difficult movie about labor strife, learns that her mother, Ada (Giulia Lazzarini), may be dying.

One of the film’s stars, John Turturro, no stranger to bringing us laughter and good story lines, is Margherita’s star. He bellows a bit but enters laughing. Italian director Nanni Morretti brings tears and life into focus. Moretti’s mother died in 2010, just as the Italian director was wrapping up work on his film “We Have a Pope.” That experience of loss leads this follow-up, the semi-autobiographical “Mia Madre,” which centers on a female stand-in for Moretti. It still manages to keep the audience off balance a bit as the subplot where ineptitude is a welcome counterbalance to sentimentality.

“Mia Madre” is set in Rome and is filled with Italian culture. Margherita, also a filmmaker, is just getting started on a film about the struggle between striking workers and the boorish head of their factory. Turturro broadly caricaturing a foolish American movie star quite well when she and her brother, Giovanni (played by Moretti), must suddenly cope with the unexpected hospitalization of their mother and her rapid decline in health.

Moretti uses dreamlike flashbacks to throw a half-light on Margherita’s past, including her youth and love affairs. Some of the film’s best moments pay homage to Federico Fellini, and to the old master’s best film, “8 1/2”, which is also about a director trying to make a film amid a multitude of personal problems.

“Mia Madre” offers comedy, insights behind the camera. The film

Showing 21@5:30; 22@7:30; 23@3:30

Also at the Panida: Rock show Rockin’ for Standing Rock 18th, Perla Bartalla opens POAC’s season 20; Peace Among Black Hills 23@6; Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and Monster Madness Classics from the 1930s for Halloween weekend and Comedy Night in November.

Patricia Walker is the executive director of the Panida Theater.