While clouds and rain filled the sky this morning over Rome, even they could not put a dampener on proceedings as the second Rome Film Festival kicked off this morning at the Auditorium Parco della Musica.

It began with Have Dreams, Will Travel, written and directed by Brad Issacs as part of the Alice in the City section. An impressive debut on the big screen, this narrates a story of burgeoning youth attempting to come to terms with the cruel realities of adult life.

Cameos by Heather Graham and Val Kilmer pale in comparison to the enchanting acting of the two leads, Anna Sophia Robb and Cayden Boyd. The occasionally clichéd sentiments were mellowed by beautiful filming and soundtrack. Like his young protagonists, Isaacs looks like he is finding his feet and is one to watch for the future.

The pezzo forzo of the day was Alain Corneau’s Le Deuxième Souffle (Second Wind) a re-make of the 1966 original by Jean-Pierre Melville. Evolving somewhat from its low-budget, black and white roots, Corneau’s remake is rippled through with extraordinary color, evidence of the strong influence of Asian cinema on his work. This change is paralleled by a removal of the story from reality and a reversion back to a tragic paradigm which Cornaeu describes as a “metaphor for gangsters living in a world apart…[the film is] not realistic but an eternal approach to modern film noir.”

Despite the exceptional cinematography, one could not help but feel that something had been sacrificed in the translation of the film for modern audiences. At 156 minutes long this was always going to be an epic undertaking, but the storyline and screenplay simply weren’t strong enough to carry the audience. While the film may have become color, the black-and-white moral codes and the consequently bland characterization could not even be pulled off by an actor as strong as Daniel Auteuil (Gu).

This being Rome, all eyes were firmly on the Italian beauty and only female protagonist in the film, Monica Bellucci (Manouche). Her self possession and elegance gave the role a composure that could have been lacking without her, and her timeless beauty lost nothing as a blonde. Yet, despite her assertions that this remake has revived the strength of character evident in Manouche in the book, even now she remained a mere femme fatale lost in a world of men and lost to the modern woman.

Last but not least, there was the beginning of the India Focus section with Khoya Khoya Chand from SudhirMishra. A colorful addition to the festival, this follows the interweaving stories of Nikhat and Zafar as they rise and fall in the Bollywood film industry and focuses on the relationship between film and life for the protagonists. With a smoldering performance from Shiney Ahuja as Zafar and an engaging evolution of character from Soha Ali Khan (Nikhat) this is an excellent introduction to Indian cinema.