Seeking Asylum (1979)

Crappy film

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Marco Ferreri, during this era, made several films that had highly ambiguous endings, where optimism and pessimism were both raised to great heights and made barely distinguishable one from another. Previously he has made 'Ciao Maschio' (Bye-Bye Monkey) which left Jane Fonda sitting on the beach with a new baby looking at the ruins of her life.Here Ferreri is in less iconoclastic mood, but still the ironies pile up to a heart-stopping finale. What this film asks is the agonising question 'Do we, by educating children, remove from them that which makes them wonderful?' Of course, there is more than that, but, when push comes to shove, that is what the film is about.There may be a more Jungian film, but I don't know of it. Here we have 'liberal' primary school teacher Roberto (Bengini) on a collision course with the 'authorities'. We have a bunch of, possibly autistic, children and we have the wondrous mother earth of Dominique Laffin (Isabella), who, as far as I am concerned was the greatest screen siren since Marilyn Monroe. (How sad that she died before the world recognised her beauty and talent.) As Roberto and Isabella coalesce, procreate and 'rescue' these damaged little souls, Ferreri asks some huge questions about existence, evolution and our place in the universe. In the final shot, as Roberto carries his loved but irreparably damaged charge into the unforgiving sea, we see this tragic drama through the eyes of a caged frog. There are few films that I think I can't really get my head around, but this is certainly one of them!

In Chiedo Asilo, Ferreri manages to find a perfect balance between urban space, and its small heterotopias that dwell in the cities. From factories, to nursery homes in factories, to small churches in the country, Ferreri places a group of children who get a visit from a very non- orthodox kindergarten teacher, played by a young Benigni. He does everything but teach them "things". Instead of investing in them small lectures of activities to keep them busy till their parents pick them up, he instead opts for bringing animals in the classroom, unleashed, so they can experience contact directly; he takes the kids on an improvised field trip to see their parents who work at factories. Alas, for all the edifying activities he presents them, Benigni can't seem to behave himself as a responsible adult: His has many girlfriends, some of which are his pupil's parents. As he zigzags in between all these situations, he applies a pedagogical treatment with his little students that little has to do with the expectations of kindergarten. He sees preschool as an a refugee, where kids can just be kids, where their sense of language and exploration can be organic, unorganized and free-floating, before moving on a educational system (school) that just feeds them data, and stimulates mindless competition. As Benigni's character sees it, that little preschool in the middle of the factory and housing complexes is a small oasis, it's an alternative space, unregulated by the long arm of education, discipline and "survivial of the fittest" ideology. One of Ferreri's film that touches an emotional fiber, and yet manages to retain all the absurdist gestures that make up his more extreme and radical work. A diamond in the rough, that needs no polishing, because its crystallized narrative roughness and pacing is part of what makes this film a classic "film with children". like Zero in Conduct, 400 Blows, or the Red Balloon, by Lamorisse.

one of the more controlled performance of Roberto Benigni, it worth alone, but the movie has its value also. It was sometime sweet, other bitter, if you have let a child in your soul I believe he/she would appreciate this strange mode to look at the reality, at a world sometimes too difficult to be explained or to be completely happy with. Maybe it's easier for an Italian to fully appreciate every moment and scene of this intense movie, but I strongly suggest it because Ferreri+Benigni is a couple that could happen to see only once. And maybe you would re-analyze all their productions, especially the other works of Marco Ferreri, usually more direct and bitter.Enjoy

Awful! Absolutely awful! No plot, no point, no end. It looks like the director turned the camera on and then the whole crew went to lunch. Every day. I'm trying to GIVE this video away but no one will take it. I'm giving it a 2 instead of a 1 because I like Benigni. Roger, I'm going to have to say thumbs down on this one.