"Parmigiano Please, Pen"
A Bigger Splash , Luca Guadagnino's new entertainment set on the island of Pantelleria off the coast of Sicily, would be only a somewhat stale and unconvincing product were it not for its treatment of the European refugee crisis, which makes the film lurch from the merely vulgar into the grotesque. The movie tells the story of Marianne Lane, a famous rock star, and Paul, her photographer boyfriend, whose summer idyll is interrupted by the arrival of her ex, Harry, a record producer, and his newly discovered teenage daughter, Penelope. It's important to note the immediate falseness of the premise and the smirking tone the film adopts. Harry, we are told in an agonisingly unironic scene early on, produced music for the Rolling Stones. In this scene, the Stones are allowed to stand for 'coolness', the rock lifestyle, and for authenticity (it's important that they're played on a vinyl record). Harry is here to visit Marianne, hoping, apparently, that though she ...