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Rating: A beautiful movie. A film about human fragilities, about Italy, about the inevitably sensitive, good, bad, selfish, overpowering, and shy nature of man.
In short: a film about all of us. And yet another proof that Mimmo Calopresti is one of the very few names we can still boast in our desolate local cinematic environment.
Shot in a chilly and seemingly freezing Turin (and isn't Turin beautiful...? if only Italians realized it more...), the film tells the story of this boy, Rosario, who "travels" to Turin, to a community, and spends time with Matteo, the son of an immigrant who has made a career, one assumes not too transparently, in his father-in-law's company. The careerist, cold and perfect, is Silvio Orlando, an actor who confirms once again to be one of the few giants still active in our poor country (which, in terms of cinema, is certainly not any better than in terms of music or literature...).
As in all truly great films, it is difficult to spot a completely positive character (Kubrick made this characteristic his trademark), even though the director's sympathy is evidently directed towards Rosario, a very cold and seemingly rude boy, entirely closed in on himself, but who possesses a moral code and a desire to change that seems only unable or unwilling (and sometimes both) to express.
Silvio Orlando, a recommended and overbearing manager, divided between a seemingly indifferent wife and a seemingly in-love lover, is, as I said, a gigantic actor, capable, like the truly great, of portraying both the fool and the ruthless with the same ease, moreover -no offense- with a face/mask that would not allow such versatility. The heterogeneity of his characters is exclusively a result of his monstrous talent.
Perfect images. Beautiful soundtrack. Certainly not American rhythm, but this is not a problem, on the contrary: rightly paced rhythms and images disconnected in frantic editing can also help that almost obsolete activity which is thinking...
Italian/French production from 2000.
Rosario will escape a Turin that he finds cold, racist, and indifferent, or maybe that's just how he sees it (perhaps more than it actually is). He'll return to Calabria because, after all, he "prefers the sound of the sea." Symbolic ending, with the boys on the Calabrian beach, expressing themselves overpoweringly and only in dialect, mocking him and throwing the book he's reading into the sea.
Rosario, smiling, goes to retrieve it and starts reading his book again, wet, in the sun.
The south is not any better than the north. In fact. But it is Rosario's right, an excellent actor hopefully a symbol of an existing youth, to try to change things by staying at home. Where he was born.
Where there is the sea.
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