Claudio Noce
Padrenostro

There is a lack of authentic emotion, and in an autobiographical film, this is almost absurd. Some good ideas are not supported by a script and development up to par, even though the director was inspired by an event that actually happened to him in 1976. His father, Deputy Chief Alfonso Noce, suffered an attack by the Nuclei Armati Proletari in front of his house.

The same happens to Alfonso Le Rose portrayed by Favino (who acts here on autopilot), but the protagonist is his son Valerio, the director's counterpart. What happens in the world around him takes a back seat, because what is central is how he perceives things, how he reworks and internalizes them. The world we see is not objective, but filtered through Valerio’s camera eyes.

Yet, in such an apparently personal dimension, there is not much of significance to be found. It seems instead like a somewhat simplistic psychoanalysis lesson. Valerio begins to throw fits, spy on his father, take long trips far from home. It is the discovery of the adult world, which at first intrigues but over time reveals its limits.

A film about children is even more difficult to make than a film about adults: because children are unfathomable, they are different, incomplete. We were all children, but can we really say what we thought then? They are simpler than us and, as is known, simplicity is the hardest thing to achieve. Telling about a lack, a void, the search for meaning, is an arduous task.

And here everything suggests that not even the director knows well what to say, apart from some more superficial cues (friendship among peers, father-son affection): his wandering between concepts is similar to Valerio’s wandering along with his friend Christian, in a game between real and imaginary that at times recalls the double in Fight Club.

With no true cognitive crescendo, lacking real themes on which to base the protagonist’s growth path, the film lives on extemporaneous inventions, small misadventures, and the almost frustrating question that lingers over Christian’s character: is he real or imagined?

Apparent contradictions that irritate rather than intrigue, and add nothing to the texture of the crisis that Valerio experiences after discovering the violent world of adults. Valerio acts out, rebels, runs away. But words and thoughts reveal almost nothing to the viewer. The outings, the drinks in dilapidated villas, the soccer challenges in the middle of the fields unfortunately have no psychologically noteworthy subtext.

And even the style cannot salvage the situation. Apart from the framing sequences, which often rely on the obvious, two scenes stand out negatively in particular: the one that reconstructs the attack with Buonanotte fiorellino by De Gregori in the background and the decisive one on the relationship between Valerio and Christian, which develops on the spreading of Impressioni di settembre. But the only impression is that of seeing some songs loved by the director glued to the sequences, but completely unsuitable for the moments of the film.