Dan Webster reviews "Ferrari"

DAN WEBSTER:

Let’s call it the People magazine syndrome. It entails the fascination that we as a society seem to have with the lives of famous people—or at least the people that certain media outlets consider famous.

If these media aren’t speculating about the sexual orientation of Taylor Swift (thank you New York Times), then they’re sharing the latest dirt on mommy-murderer Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the angst that British queen-in-waiting Kate Middleton is feeling over her son George’s imminent departure for Eton, or the reasons behind singer/talk-show host Kelly Clarkson’s recent weight loss.

And filmmakers are following suit. If it isn’t Todd Haynes rehashing the Mary Kay Letourneau story in his film May December, it’s Ridley Scott, examining the life of Italian businessman Maurizio Gucci in 2021’s House of Gucci.

It seems only natural, then, for another A-list director, Michael Mann, to take on the story of Enzo Ferrari, the legendary Italian carmaker and, as history tells us, inveterate womanizer.

Whatever drove him to embrace the Ferrari story, though, Mann does manage to make the tale his own. And regardless of the voyeuristic factor involved, Mann’s film—titled simply enough Ferrari—is a scintillating watch, as well as something that should satisfy the most ardent celebrity-watcher.

Set mostly in the year 1957, Ferrari opens with our protagonist (played by Adam Driver) being told that he is going broke. "How could this happen?" he demands. "Simple," his accountant tells him, "you spend more than you make." And what Ferrari likes spending money on is racing.

Always a competitor—not a sportsman, he stresses—Ferrari once drove himself. But now he is the man behind his company’s renowned racing team, vying annually with the Maserati-sponsored drivers for track records, for race victories and for the monetary backing that will allow him to stay in business.

His other expense, though—one hidden from his estranged wife and business partner Laura (played by Penelope Cruz)—is the upkeep of the house inhabited by his longtime mistress Lina Lardi (played by Shailene Woodley) and her son with Ferrari, Piero (played by Giuseppe Festinese).

We watch as the two main plotlines play out: in one, Ferrari demands excellence, even as he loses one driver to an accident, because his accountant also tells him that the one way to save his company is to sell more cars. And the way to do that is to win the Mille Miglia, an open-road endurance race that annually draws millions of spectators.

At the same time, he must play the Machiavellian game of finance. To attract the backing he needs, he must negotiate with America’s Ford Motor Company—a story that was covered, in a setting a decade later, by James Mangold’s 2019 film Ford v Ferrari. But to even begin dealing with Ford, Ferrari must first assume wife Laura’s company shares—power that she is loath to give up, especially after she discovers Ferrari’s secret relationship with Lina.

In another director’s hands, this latter half of the film might unfold like a Lifetime Channel film. But Mann is no ordinary director, as he has proven in everything from the Miami Vice TV series to the 1995 crime feature Heat. Yes, Driver is a sturdy presence as the title character, just as he was, curiously enough, as Ridley Scott’s Gucci. And while Woodley seems a curious casting choice, Cruz is her usual splendid self as the wronged-but-never-weak Laura.

The true joy of Ferrari, though, comes mostly from watching Mann work. Whether portraying the demands that Ferrari makes on his drivers, the intimacy with which he treats Piero and Lina, the deviousness of the deal-making between husband and wife, or the impressively graphic portrayals of fatal car crashes, Mann is precise in capturing both the mood and the authenticity of the story he is telling.

Which, come to think of it, might be why he was drawn to exploring the life of Ferrari in the first place—one master analyzing the power that drives another.

Either that or he, too, habitually reads People magazine.

For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.

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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is a senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com/7blog.