John Turturro's 'Passione' jilts some, seduces others

If Italian is the preeminent language of passion and music, the city of most passionate musical plenty is Naples. Singing is a required not acquired taste there, and in John Turturro's razzle-dazzling, feature-length, MTV-like documentary on the subject.

"Passione: A Musical Adventure" is a loving ode to Neapolitan music by a man better known as actor than director. Mr. Turturro -- a longtime Coen Brothers favorite from "Miller's Crossing" and "The Big Lebowski" to "Barton Fink" -- has played countless equally quirky characters for the likes of Martin Scorsese ("Color of Money"), Spike Lee ("Do the Right Thing") and Robert Redford ("Quiz Show").

The quirky star-character here is Naples itself, where "fire and lava poured into the streets" literally in A.D. 79 from Vesuvius (five miles away -- still considered active and highly dangerous), and have done so metaphorically ever since. The Turturro tour of its molten musical styles includes 23 song performances with (tastefully spare) commentary about the diverse influences on a key port conquered by Arabs, Normans, Germans and eventually Americans.

From the operatic tradition that produced Caruso through African-American blues and Euro-pop dance tracks, "Being Neapolitan means being all of them, and the dialect we call Neapolitan is musical itself." EVERYBODY sings in Naples, on and off the job, as we see and hear in vignettes of singers, dancers and lovers on the street -- all Mr. Turturro's paisans, including the sons of Naples' pioneer record-maker, who first captured its music at the turn of the 20th century on wax cylinders.

Picturesque physical vistas are incorporated, of course, but the bulk of the glossy visuals are music-video style, keyed to the songs and their soap-operatic narratives, set in Naples' ancient, gritty, graffiti-stained cobblestone streets.

There's undeniable vibrancy and sex appeal in these performances, but the music and dancing itself (most influenced, it seems to me, by Spanish zarzuela) has a certain sameness after a while. The music Mr. Turturro calls "drenched in contradiction and irony" does not much manifest that, except for one brilliant sceneggiata story-song, in which a man sings a duet with his wife, who waits downstairs while he lies in bed with a lover.

On the other hand, the lyrics are to die for. ("I love you so much ... but if I can't find you, I'll be with your sister.") And the interspersed archival footage -- of such greats as Sergio Bruni (Italy's Sinatra) and rival versions of the iconic "O Sole Mio" -- is fascinating.

Mr. Turturro's narration is sometimes but not always useful, lacking real revelations into why music plays such a huge, ethnically integral role in Neapolitan life. He's wiser when he lets the subjects speak for themselves, such as a blues musician-son of a black American G.I. and a Neapolitan woman-describing how he absorbed African-American music during the post-WWII U.S. occupation.

Eternal verities apply, as always, especially in the song dedicated to "a woman who failed to keep her promise" -- speaking to all victims of fickle, faithless females: "I love you, I hate you, I cannot forget you, I cannot forgive you for what you've done to me." And the woman's counter-lament: "I never found a man that understood me. I am the mirror you never want to use."

But around the 21st swooning ballad, I succumbed to passion overload.

In the inevitable comparisons to "Buena Vista Social Club," Wim Wenders' and Ry Cooder's terrific rough-around-the-edges Cuban music documentary, Mr. Turturro's "Passione" comes up short. It's much slicker -- too slick. A niche film, if ever there was one, for mass audiences.

But a must-see for the Loyal Order of Sons & Daughters of Italy.