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Retrospective Film Review
The Protagonists (1999) • 25 Years Later — the camera often lies in Luca Guadagnino’s debut
An Italian film crew shoots a documentary in London about a recent murder.
Here’s a confession: until earlier this year, I’d never seen The Protagonists, Luca Guadagnino’s first feature, despite becoming increasingly interested in the director. I wasn’t alone in that, of course; it did the festival rounds but barely had a theatrical release at all, although today you can find it on streaming. Even the director tends to dismiss it as a youthful folly (he was in his late twenties when it was made), and he called it “that crazy film” when accepting a Silver Lion award at the Venice International Film Festival for Bones and All (2022). The Protagonists itself did achieve some small recognition at Venice back in 1999, and it has attracted a few supporters over the years, but audiences and critics both then and later have generally found it baffling, self-indulgent, exploitative, or all three.
It may be one of the oddest films you’ll ever see, and though one of its purposes is clearly to…