Film News: The Family

The Family is out today in the UK. It's based on Tonino Benaquista's Badfellas and is about an American mob family in witness protection in France.

Official blurb: A mafia boss and his family are relocated to a sleepy town in France under the witness protection program after snitching on the mob. Despite the best efforts of Agent Stansfield to keep them in line, Fred Manzoni, his wife Maggie and their children Belle and Warren can't help but revert to old habits and blow their cover by handling their problems the "family" way, enabling their former mafia cronies to track them down. Chaos ensues as old scores are settled in the unlikeliest of settings.

The reviews haven't been terribly good but don't let that put you off reading the source material, translated into English by Emily Read.

Badfellas - Sneak Peek

I'm currently reading Badfellas by Tonino Benacquista, tr. Emily Read which is shaping up to be another Bitter Lemon Press gem.

Blurb: "The story is violent, pacy and full of black humour. Imagine the Soprano family arriving in France, or perhaps better, Ray Liotta, the snitch from ‘Goodfellas’ settling down with his family in a small town in Normandy."

Opening Lines:

They took possession of the house in the middle of the night. Any other family would have seen it as a new start. The first morning of a new life – a new life in a new town. A rare moment that shouldn’t take place in the dark. For the Blakes, however, it was a moonlight flit in reverse: they were moving in as discreetly as possible. Maggie, the mother, went in first, tapping her heels on the steps to scare away any lurking rats. She went through all the rooms, ending up in the cellar, which appeared to be clean and to have the perfect level of humidity for maturing wheels of Parmesan, or storing cases of Chianti. The father, Frederick, who had never felt at ease around rodents, allowed his wife to go ahead.

From p69:

Without realizing it, Fred was proving a universal truth, which goes like this: as soon as one idiot tries to light a fire somewhere, four others will gather round to tell him how to do it.