`Tea’ cast makes movies enjoyable again> `Stigmata’ lacks plot, compensates with religious cliches

“Tea with Mussolini”

Directed by Franco Zeffirelli. Written by John Mortimer and Zeffirelli. Running time: 117 minutes. Rated PG.

Franco Zeffirelli’s autobiographical film, “Tea with Mussolini,” features a cast that’s so good, so strong and so perfect for their roles, they make it a pleasure to go to the movies again.

The film stars Cher, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Lily Tomlin and Joan Plowright, five heavy-weight actresses who suggest that the Italian director’s life from 1935 to 1945 was rarely with a dull moment. Indeed, there are more than a few moments when “Tea” feels like a campy interpretation of Vittorio De Sica’s “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.”

The film — which is so affectionate, it suggests more warmth of memory than real life events — follows these five women from great wealth to even greater financial despair as they gather to raise Luca, a boy born out of wedlock who flourishes under their guidance.

No fool, Zeffirelli conspires to give each actress her moment, the best of which belong to Cher, Plowright and Smith. In this constellation of stars, theirs shine the brightest.

But it’s Cher who is the most unforgettable, Cher who makes you want to see the film again. As Elsa, a flamboyant American-Jew who dresses and behaves as extravagantly as, well, Cher, the actress caps a great year with one of her best performances. Believe it.

Grade: A-

“Stigmata”

Directed by Rupert Wainwright. Written by Tom Lazarus and Rick Ramage. Running time: 102 minutes. Rated R.

Clearly, the bright, well-read folks who made “Stigmata” have no idea what stigmata means.

Director Rupert Wainwright and his screenwriters Tom Lazarus and Rick Ramage have confused the term so hilariously with demonic possession, they made their star, Patricia Arquette, speak in deep, rumbling croaks taken straight from Linda Blair’s performance in “The Exorcist.”

No religious ecstasy there.

Worse, the film suggests that stigmata is something you can catch from holding a rosary, as if it were a deadly bacteria and not a phenomenon allegedly experienced by deeply religious people who have been taken over by the Holy Spirit.

Since the theology behind stigmata is lost on its filmmakers, “Stigmata” never creates a satisfying illusion. Wainwright’s heavy-handed direction suggests desperation. He doesn’t have much of a story to work with, so he throws a neverending barrage of religious cliches at the screen — water, doves, bleeding Madonnas, levitations.

His film isn’t scary, so he tries to give it energy by cutting it like a Guns ‘N Roses music video, which only makes his dull film frightfully choppy and, at times, unbearably loud.

The performances by Gabriel Byrne and Arquette are enough to lift this film out of cinematic hell, but even Arquette’s character, a Pittsburgh hairstylist, knows something isn’t right here. At one point, she picks her ravaged body off the floor to say: “If it isn’t God who’s doing this to me, who is?”

Your director. Your screenwriters. Your agent. You.

Grade: C-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear each Monday and Thursday in the NEWS, each Tuesday and Thursday on WLBZ’s “News Center 5:30 Today” and “News Center Tonight,” and each Saturday and Sunday on WCSH’s statewide “Morning Report.”