“It is these slivers of characterization that give Sicilian Letters the bit of color it so desperately needs, since the narrative develops exactly how you’d expect it.”

Matteo Messina Denaro was arrested on January 16, 2023 in a private clinic near Palermo, Sicily. Nicknamed Diabolik, after an Italian comic book hero, Denaro was one of the last Sicilian Mafia bosses still at large. Once named the world’s third most wanted fugitive, he remained elusive for a long time, but in 2006 Italian Secret Services were actually close to nicking him after they found a former mayor of his hometown, who had known the mobster since he was a young boy, willing to start a correspondence with Denaro, in hiding since the streak of bombings that terrorized Italy in the early ’90s. Taking down a network of ‘postmen’ who would deliver pizzini (notes written by mafia members) back and forth, the Secret Service was about to arrest Denaro when the correspondence abruptly stopped after it became public knowledge that one side of the conversation was actually working undercover for the authorities.

Italian directors Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza stay true to their Sicilian cinema roots in their third feature film together, Sicilian Letters (Iddu), taking this true story as a starting point for yet another film set on the Italian island that is Grassadonia’s birthplace (Piazza was born in Milan). Situating the story close to Denaro’s hometown of Castelvetrano in southern Sicily, basically moving it twenty kilometers further south to the archaeological site and coastal town of Selinunte, Sicilian Letters sticks to the story closely, even if the former mayor is replaced by a local politician by the name of Catello Palumbo (played by Tony Servillo, with a horrendous comb-over). Just released from prison, it doesn’t take long before he is enlisted to get to Matteo (Elio Germano), the successor of an infamous mafia leader who has gone into hiding. The two men go way back; Catello was a friend of Matteo’s now deceased father and has known Matteo since birth. Catello writes Matteo a letter, delivered via so-called pizzini, tightly folded sheets of paper wrapped in tape (hidden in fish, for instance) and delivered by trusted people. He suggests to the younger man a deal over an unfinished hotel that Catello had in development before going to jail; since trust is a currency on the island, Matteo actually writes back, and so starts a back-and-forth between two men who find an unexpected connection in literature. The ploy is to lure Matteo out of hiding, and the way to do that is through Matteo’s young son…

While Sicilian Letters is based on a true story, most of the characters are fictional or amalgamations of different people. Because of that the film is riddled with stock characters that are the staple of crime films like this, like the rogue investigator Rita (Daniela Marra) or the mysterious woman hiding Matteo, Lucia (Barbora Bobulova). Most of these characters are mere plot devices, even though these two in particular also have enough depth through their relations to Catello and Matteo, respectively. Especially the character of Lucia gives Matteo more texture, because they essentially share only one location. In his conversations with her, Matteo works through the death of his strict father who prepared him to take over as the region’s major crime boss through hardship and tough love. Grassadonia and Piazza are less generous to Catello, giving Servillo a good number of humorous lines to work with, but not developing his character much from the calculating man who knows how to weigh his words. It is fun to see how both leading characters play with language in the letters they send to each other, never revealing intentions openly but also leaving each other subtle hints about the next steps in their relationship.

It is these slivers of characterization that give Sicilian Letters the bit of color it so desperately needs, since the narrative develops exactly how you’d expect it even if it is more or less a copy of the real life story. There is a slew of other characters who all get their moment to shine, like Catello’s bumbling son-in-law Pino (Giuseppe Tantillo) or Matteo’s tough-as-nails sister Stefania (Antonia Truppo), but their story beats over-complicate the plot of the film, which should have had more focus on its main characters playing their game of chess through the titular letters. That’s not to say Sicilian Letters isn’t an enjoyable two hours spent, especially in the company of two excellent actors in Servillo and Germano, but as soon as the film veers away from those two and puts other characters in the spotlight it takes a dip. The directors’ first venture outside of Cannes’ Critics Week after their debut Salvo and follow-up Sicilian Ghost Story is a step back from those two, but Sicilian Letters entertains and contains an interesting lesson in the island’s long history with organized crime.

(c) Image copyright: Giulia Parlato