My Dad is 100 Years Old (2005)

Review by All Movie Guide
Isabella Rossellini wrote the script for and narrates My Dad Is 100 Years Old as a personal letter to and defense of her father, famed Italian neorealist Roberto Rossellini. (The director died in 1977.) She also plays (in profile) prominent film titans in the director's life including Federico Fellini and Alfred Hitchcock, voicing their arguments for and against Roberto's film theories. This back and forth gives the film some intellectual stolidity to what could otherwise be an entirely personal exercise. If the text proves that Isabella is as resolute in her convictions as her father, the images created by director Guy Maddin are equally representative of his own tastes. (Isabella played the glass-legged beer baroness of his previous feature The Saddest Music in the World.) He certainly takes advantage of the '40s to '60s time frame, ideal for his retro dreamscapes. One of the more memorable conceits is that Roberto is depicted as a pregnant belly in close-up, enormous and unmoving, but giving birth to brilliant ideas. Although, Isabella and Maddin's apparently simpatico collaboration produces thought-provoking and imaginative moments, the film is more a curiosity than anything else and some may wonder why such a highly stylized approach is being used to salute a director who prized simplicity whenever possible. ~ Michael Buening, All Movie Guide