Matteo Garrone
Primo Amore

THE REVIEW

FIRST LOVE OR LOVE IN ITS PATHOLOGICAL ASPECT:

- Desire for possession for him
- Sense of inadequacy for her

Love as a power relationship manifested through the psychological violence of one partner over the other. Love as incommunicability with the two lovers too lonely and selfish to be able to help each other.

Vittorio is a goldsmith, but his work doesn't give him great satisfaction, he is undergoing treatment from a psychiatrist, he is obsessed with thinness and will not hesitate to subject his partner to unbearable trials just to reach the desired weight.
Sonia poses as a model for the paintings of art academy students; she is already thin (emblematic is the scene where the girl manages to hide behind a small tree trunk) but she has deep self-disdain, too insecure to be able to support and help Vittorio to defeat his illness, she will prefer to annihilate herself just to please him.

Matteo Garrone in his IV film creates an experimental and quite original work in the Italian landscape.
He lets the images tell the story, doing so by loading them with a  very strong symbolism:

- the darkness of the bars on Vittorio's house window, cutting the light almost recalling the aspect of a prison
- Sonia's body reduced to material that Vittorio manipulates and transforms just like he does with his gold, in the factory

Garrone's Cinema is of strong emotional impact, it is not at all consoling, unsettles, disturbs, makes the viewer reflect, striking them precisely in their certainties but loses tone when it can't avoid the excesses (Ex. The restaurant scene) for a film that would have been even stronger without the tragic ending. Still, it remains a terribly current work in an era that paradoxically, despite technological progress, continues to be dominated by incommunicability.

The music by Banda Osiris is splendid.