Film review: Melodramatic aspects of Ferrari leavened by coldly brutal approach of leads

Adam Driver stars in Ferrari. Picture: Lorenzo Sisti

★★★★☆

Set in 1957, ten years after Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) and his wife Laura (Penelope Cruz) established their iconic auto empire, Ferrari (15A) finds itself in crisis. 

Enzo, still publicly mourning the death of his young son Dino, is accused of being a ‘widow-maker’ due to the number of drivers killed in his cars; an emphasis on racing rather than production means the company is on the brink of bankruptcy; and Ferrari’s private life descends into chaos as Laura discovers that she is the only person in Modena who doesn’t know that Enzo has a mistress, Lina (Shailene Woodley), and an unacknowledged son Piero (Giuseppe Festinese). 

A volatile brew, to say the least of it, but the melodramatic aspects of Michael Mann’s film are leavened by the coldly brutal approach of the leads. 

Adam Driver plays Enzo as the personification of his automobiles, a sleekly manufactured exterior disguising a machine-like ambition, while the long-suffering Laura (with Penelope Cruz in superb form) has been reduced by grief and betrayal to a stony-faced pragmatist desperate to save the Ferrari brand from the worst excesses of Ferrari himself. 

(cinema release)