Review | Venice 2023: Ferrari movie review – Adam Driver plays Enzo Ferrari in Michael Mann’s operatic look at the man and his sports car brand
- Not a film about motorsport, or a biopic, Mann’s film is instead a nuts-and-bolts look at the man at the wheel of a company about to steer off the road
- Motorsport’s glamour is here and there’s enough racing to satisfy fans, but the focus is on Enzo Ferrari the man, and his wife (a show-stealing Penélope Cruz)
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3.5/5 stars
In Ferrari, esteemed director Michael Mann’s first film in eight years, motorsport is seen as “a terrible joy”.
It’s a passion, an obsession and something that dominates lives, or even takes them away.
Screening in competition at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, the film is a portrait of Enzo Ferrari, the Italian racing-car driver turned leader of the automobile company that one day would produce sports cars for the rich and famous.
Scripted by Troy Kennedy Martin from Brock Yates’ definitive 1991 biography Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine, Ferrari is not an Icarus-like story in the way 2018’s Driven depicted the rise and fall of the DeLorean sports car.
Rather, it’s a nuts-and-bolts look at the man at the wheel of a company that, in 1957, was about to steer off the road.
Adam Driver, his hair dyed grey, plays Ferrari; Penélope Cruz stars as his wife, Laura, who co-founded the company with her husband a decade earlier.
Their marriage has been rocked by the loss of a son, while Ferrari barely conceals his infidelities. “You broke my heart years ago,” shrugs Laura, although, unlike many, she is unaware of Lina (Shailene Woodley), a mistress who bore Ferrari another boy.
As Ferrari prepares to enter a team for the Mille Miglia, an open-road endurance race, he’s also desperately trying to save the family business, with giants like Fiat or Ford hovering.
Mann meticulously recreates the glamour of the sport. Sarah Gadon pops up as Hollywood Golden Age actress Linda Christian, who – much to Ferrari’s annoyance – takes the photographers’ attention away from his drivers.
Motorsport fans will purr at the race scenes, as cars career around the tracks, just one gear change away from disaster.
Some roles, like the drivers played by Jack O’Connell and Patrick Dempsey, are thinly sketched. In truth, all are put in the shade by Cruz, who steals the film as the wily, explosive Laura.
What’s surprising is that this isn’t really a film about motorsport, or even a biopic, as such. This is an operatic look at Ferrari, the man rather than the machine, and how one of the most iconic car brands of all time came so close to disaster.
With that in mind, it’s an impressive pit stop by Mann.
