dromasca Luciano owns a booth in the fish market in Naples and rounds his revenues with a suspect scheme of phony kitchen robots ordering and re-selling. He has a typically assertive Italian wife, three typically sticky and noisy Italian kids and a bunch of family and neighbors which are as typical as Fellini characters can be. His lodging in the decrypt area of Naples is kind of a set of the 'Leopard' abandoned for 150 years. His contact with the big world are the reality shows, his only apparent chance of breaking the walls of his limited life is getting on the set of the 'Big Brother' show. A dream which he will eventually achieve at the cost of his own sanity.Aniello Arena is the name of the actor who plays Luciano and he does a fine job describing the descent of the character into insanity, his increasing obsession that all his life has become a reality show. Do you remember Truman Show starring Jim Carrey? The hero there thought that he was living a normal life and in reality all was a TV show. Here it's quite the opposite. Director Matteo Garrone does a fine cinematography job, and his sets look at many moments like descending from Fellini or Visconti. The ending may ask some questions about reality, but actually we have descended into the i-reality of such shows. I liked it.

georgep53 A horse driven coach beautifully adorned and accompanied by elegantly dressed coachmen makes its way to a wedding ceremony while the grubby business of daily life goes on around it. One can almost imagine the clock striking midnight and the coach reverting back into a pumpkin while the horses & coachmen become mice. Like the folks sitting in the coach we crave our escapist fantasies even though we know that when we wake up in the morning the world will still be the same old place. But what happens when a man becomes so desirous of fame & fortune that the real world seems fake and the dream world becomes reality? That forms the basis of Matteo Garrone's Cannes Film Festival 2012 Grand Prix winner--"Reality" a wonderfully entertaining comedy-drama starring Aniello Arena as Luciano a fishmonger who lives a quiet middle class life with his wife and children. His wife, Maria, played by Loredana Simioli works as a marketer for a dubious new device called the "Robot" which promises to revolutionize work in the kitchen. Arena's friend and employee Michele (Nando Paone)is devoted to religious iconography and can't seem to stop making the sign of the cross while attending church. After Luciano is persuaded one day to audition for the Italian version of "Big Brother" his determination to join the cast becomes the pivotal objective of his life so much so that his friends begin to worry that he may be losing his mind.In "Reality" Garrone masterfully satirizes a world governed by superstition, consumerism and the ultimate hallucinogen-----television. Reality television is no more real than anything else on the tube. It's like sitting in a carriage that will turn into a pumpkin when the cameras stop rolling. Aniello Arena and Loredana Simioli are perfect as Luciano and his suffering wife. "Reality" vacillates between the poignant and the absurdly funny.

Blayne Alexander Reality is a wonderfully drawn film that showcases the obsessive behavior of a guy destined (in his own mind) to take the prize on Italy's 'Big Brother.' Not a new premise by any stretch, and always difficult to watch. He basically throws his life, the life of his family, and his own sanity out the window for a stupid reality TV show, before needing the proper motivation to fight his way back.That being said it is a story of flawed characters. Of which we are all. So I tried very hard to get over my general distaste of the main character's actions and maneuvers to enjoy the story that was being told. Direction and cinematography are top notch. Simply exquisite. The non stop sweeping camera made my knees weak at times...and I simply loved the title treatment at the end of the film. Probably even gained it another star simply because it made me smile on my way out the door.But when all is said and done we find our characters, and in many ways ourselves, left exactly as we were to begin with, nothing learned, nothing lost, and definitely nothing ultimately gained.

cinematic_aficionado Reality is a fitting title about a man who totally lost it (his own sense of reality).Part satire, part a comic-tragic portrait of our world with its vanities our hero is just an everyday guy who is a fishmonger, and like many others has a souse, children with all that goes with it.His world is shaken when following a brief performance in a wedding reception he becomes acquainted with a celebrity and the desire is born in him that he can be part of this world, the world of stardom, wealth and recognition.So by making use of this brief acquaintance he enters a competition to join big brother and does so in the certainty it will be his passport to fame and fortune. The contact with fame though ludicrously brief it is enough to cause him a great deal of harm.The harm came in the form of obsessive behaviour, paranoia and hallucination causing a loss of his own self awareness and disregard for all those around him.A charmer of a movie about vanity, obsession and a surrounding culture that feeds us these kind of fake feelings and desires.