‘Ferrari’: Venice Review

Dir. Michael Mann. US, 2023. 130mins

For a film about the early, lethal days of Formula One, and the stylish motoring genius Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) who helped drive them, there is a surprising amount of Modeno-set soap opera to navigate in Michael Mann’s first release since 2015’s Blackhat. Will Enzo stay with his wife and business-partner/factory lease holder, the embittered Laura (Penelope Cruz), divided in sorrow after the recent death of their son? Or will he hit the fast track himself to the house he keeps for his patient, plum-picking mistress Linda (Shailene Woodley) and their secret child? The cars lose pole position for a good deal of this perfectly-realised period piece, set during the summer of 1957 when Ferrari was facing bankruptcy and decided to play all his cards – and five drivers – at the Mille Miglia race, the last of its kind. 

The cars lose pole position for a good deal of this perfectly-realised period piece

There’s a clear intersection between audiences who follow Mann, fast car-racing and period Adam Driver films set in Italy. Ferrari should deliver them to cinemas (for Neon in the US), although the number of producers involved in Mann’s labour of love is testament to how long it took to get this vehicle around the track, and for good cause. (Previous names attached to the role of Ferrari include Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman.) This is a refined, exquisite – expensive – production, but Ferrari doesn’t step up the gears fast and furious enough for wider appeal: Mann will rely on his film’s high-end credits and upmarket nostalgia appeal to line up spectators. 

It could be said that Ferrari is too late to get off its own starting blocks, and there’s certainly something off about its structural balance which leads to a suspicion that some of the film may have been lost in edit – particularly with Ferrari’s drivers (including those played by Jack O’Connell and Patrick Dempsey) and their own romantic partnerships, which are now too cursory now to make any impact. Certainly, driving for Enzo Ferrari in 1957, 10 years after the former racing car driver set up his business with his wife, was to dance with death. The film starts with the loss of his star driver in a time trial, to be replaced by the Spanish aristocrat and playboy Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone). And the death count will only rise, spectacularly by the end point.

After an impressive manipulation of early racing footage to include Driver at the wheel, Enzo Ferrari, recognisable for his dark glasses and smart suits, is placed in a firmly domestic setting. His wife and partner Laura runs the day to day business, which is struggling and needs investment in order to ramp up line production and divert the profits into Formula One. She carries so much cash around with her to meet the payroll, he has given her a gun — which Laura fires into the wall after he breaks their marital agreement by being late home for breakfast following a romantic assignment. They are both grieving the death of their son separately, yet the womanising Enzo has a secret family stashed away in the countryside which Ferrari is also bankrolling. Laura is the only person in town who doesn’t know about it.

Meanwhile, on the track — which is where many may have expected this film to entirely play out – Ferrari is feeling threatened by the success of local rival Maserati and pushes his drivers hard. “We all know it’s our deadly passion, our terrible joy,” he says. Having lost several friends to accidents on the track, he has built ‘a wall’ around his emotions. (Although he is quite excited by women and cars, saying one vehicle “has an ass on it like a Canova sculpture”.) With Driver and cast speaking in accented English, it’s odd to hear the actor deliver lines like an Italian Yoda: “From my mistakes, I learn,” he says. Later: “Your face, I want to see.” One might hazard a guess that the 23 years spent on bringing Ferrari to the screen were not all devoted to honing the dialogue.

The film does land, in the end. Mann is a past master at delivering set-pieces, and the Mille Miglia race is Ferrari’s money shot. Unfortunately all the cars in this fast cross-country race are red, making it hard to distinguish the drivers, but viewers will know precisely what happens when it comes, and it does take your breath away. Resolutions thereafter are swift and not entirely satisfactory, but Ferrari was made with the co-operation of Piero Ferrari (once that illegitimate child, later the heir to the kingdom) and the surviving Agnelli family (Gianni is shown in negotiation here for Fiat’s investment in Ferrari). Everyone is happy – apart from the dead.

Adam Driver’s tense delivery and imposing physicality lends the character a strength and presence which is not always borne out in the stiff screenplay, and the film owes much of its life to Cruz’s spitfire character. Music is on the nose, especially when it comes to domestic interludes with Ferrari’s bucolic second family. Any film involving Formula One tends to perform solidly, particularly the documentaries: it’s a dangerous game. Ferrari drives that point home (‘the cars, the races’ of the film’s source novel by Brock Yates, Enzo Ferrari: ‘The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine’) but the man himself and the machine tend to become confused in a swirl of dark glasses and wet raincoats in a production-perfect Italy of the late 1950s.