Paolo Virzì
Ella & John

It is not Virzì's most successful film, there's no doubt about that, but even with a bit too much lightness and a structure not always brilliant, it still manages to unravel a knot of emotion and existential meanings that embrace everyone's experience, touching the deep chords of every human being.

Slowly, but with unfailing method, we delve into the lives of the two elderly protagonists. With perfect balance, everything about them is revealed, even in their occasional dialogues and in the most unusual episodes of an impromptu trip in an old camper. The script is precise, surgical, even though it lacks the sharp wit that, for example, graced Like Crazy. It is as if the English language has created a diaphragm that distances the sensitivity of the Livorno director from his dramatic expression. The writing is (perhaps too) meditated, losing some of the instinctiveness that flowed from the characters in other films.

The ability to chisel the personalities of the protagonists remains intact, moving back and forth through their biographies, often exploiting poor John's memory problems. Thus, a mosaic of episodes and different personalities is formed, harmonizing in the figures of two tender elderly still in love. And the journey is a pretext, an opportunity to tell and retell their lives together, to look at slides and try to remember who the people present are. A pretext to taste those wonderful almond cookies, to take a bite of a burger and hit the old beloved Route 1.

Then, from such a picture of sweetness and bittersweet prods, a particular dark spot is distinguished. Death, betrayed love, the daily struggle of enduring each other, illness. The ending is not so important, what will become of Ella and John, but the ability of the work to backlight the image of a love that does not fade, capturing all its meanings. But not the ones explained in words, rather the epidermal sense of a shared life, that taking care of each other in small things, that "despite everything."

All the delicacy of the marital portrait, which is almost a philosophical reading on existence, is concentrated in a few dizzying details, in a moment of carnal love never so tender and humanly vulnerable, and for this reason invincible and everlasting.

Themes that are not very fresh, but painted with happiness in the director's looks and in the heartfelt performances of Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. There isn't much more to add, except that Virzì's protagonists always accompany you a little bit even outside the theater, remaining like gentle presences. You would want to really know them, Ella and John, to endure for a few hours the endless discourses on Hemingway, or the detailed stories of adolescent loves and family events. Just for the beauty of their imperfections.

7/10