This past weekend saw the release of Us, writer-director Jordan Peele’s first film since his breakout feature, Get Out. Us arrives on a wave of hype and anticipation, and the question on everyone’s mind seems to have been, “Will Peele be able to repeat the success of his debut or will he fall victim to the dreaded sophomore slump?” That curse, of course, is not unique to filmmakers, as creative figures in most artistic media who make a splash with their first major work buckle under the pressure of having to repeat or even top themselves with their follow-up. Some directors respond to the pressure by making a formula of their success and create second features that all too closely resemble their debuts. (All the Real Girls, David Gordon Green’s follow-up to George Washington, is one example that comes to mind.) Others (like Steven Soderbergh, whose second feature, Kafka, is one of his biggest duds) branch out so far from what made their first features special that they end up adrift.
Mamma Roma The least known of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s features in this country also happens to be one of his best. It stars Anna Magnani at her most volcanic, hyperbolic, and magnificent as a Roman prostitute trying to go straight and provide a respectable middle-class existence for her teenage son. Interestingly enough, while the slums of Rome were Pasolini’s essential turf, he dealt with them directly only in his first two films, Accattone (1961) and Mamma Roma (1962), turning mainly to period films and allegories in his subsequent movies. But the ultimate rejection of the bourgeois and petit bourgeois world is as total in the subproletarian milieu of this film as it would be in his later work. Not to be missed; with Ettore Garofolo, Franco Citti, and Silvana Corsini. —Jonathan Rosenbaum
