Claudio Cupellini
Alaska

Alaska is a story of desperate love, friendship, and loneliness.

Paris: Nadine, an orphaned girl with delicate beauty, and Fausto, an Italian waiter at a luxury hotel, meet on the hotel terrace where they find a break from their commitments. Fausto is enchanted by Nadine and, to woo her, invites her to the hotel suite.

The suite is fabulous, and as in all fairy tales, they lose track of time, so they too stay longer than expected, and when the guest returns, they are still inside.

A harsh return to reality: while the guest calls management, Nadine tries to stop him, he reacts violently, and Fausto assaults him, knocking him unconscious. They flee, but the escape lasts very little for Fausto, who manages to let Nadine escape just before being apprehended by the police.

He is sentenced to two years in prison, while Nadine is hired as a model in Milan: the two promise to wait for each other anyway.

And so it will be, but their love will be marked by a curse: "the better one's life goes, the more the other will hit rock bottom."

The main narrative intertwines with other secondary plots, among which stands out the fraternal friendship between Fausto and Sandro. The relationships between the three characters unfold on a thread stretched over the abyss of loneliness from which they come and into which each of them constantly risks falling again. The risk of turning the story into a sappy drama is avoided because Alaska is a well-written film: the narrative developments are logical and rarely become excessive; similarly, the characters are well-characterized in their oscillation between success and failure.

Elio Germano and Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey act (very well) in two languages, the first part in French and the second in Italian. However, the linguistic choice is not tied to the location; in fact, once in Italy, French becomes the language of intimacy for the couple.

In the supporting roles, Valerio Binasco (Sandro) stands out, and the cameo by Marco D’Amore, who plays a character not far from the Immortal character that made him famous.