L'Orchestra Of Piazza Vittorio

As it follows the creation of a world music orchestra in Rome, L'Orchestra Of Piazza Vittorio promises much on paper, but delivers less on film. The set-up elements sound like the perfect basis for a documentary. In the face of a political atmosphere that is increasingly hostile to immigrants in Italy's traditional monoculture, a local musician Mario Tronco enlists a local filmmaker Agostino Ferrente to document the creation of his dream. He wants to pull together the talents of isolated immigrant musicians in Rome to create a fusion orchestra.

The first half of the film, which opens with a flirtatious, joyous Bollywood-flavored scene, is spent in an amusing, engaging search for musicians. At first, the filmmakers fail to penetrate the varied immigrant enclaves - there is a wonderful montage of rejection as they ask various shopkeepers for leads to musicians - but eventually they start to find a cascade of international treasures.

The attempt to form this group coincides with a community campaign to save the only theatre in this area of Rome, The Apollo, from being turned into a bingo hall. Eventually the city agrees to buy the theatre with the intention of turning it into a local performance venue, and the pressure is on to consolidate and rehearse "L'Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio".

We meet some wonderful characters from Africa, the Middle East and the sub-Continent, but once the group is assembled and actually starts playing with each other, their stories are submerged in a chaotic, and somehow impersonal, view of the rehearsal process. Suddenly there are myriad new characters we haven't been introduced to and our favorites are somewhere in the background.

The documentary stumbles over its own strengths. It does not give us a sense of the joy of musical discovery that the orchestra's members must have felt in each other's company, nor does it give us enough of the music itself. Mario Tronco, the initiator and orchestra leader, becomes the focus of the film, but he is insufficiently magnetic to hold it together. What starts as a rhythmic tease turns into a docu-disappointment.