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The rare and terrible disease affecting Rocky Dennis (a young Eric Stoltz) is called lionitis: it monstrously deforms his skull and face, making him so deformed that people believe he is wearing a mask. However, it is compensated by the deep love his mother Rusty (Cher) feels for him and by the selfless and protective friendship offered by a group of harmless misfits to the young man.
Rocky's father abandoned his mother when he was still very young, and she finds refuge from the difficulties and sufferings by turning to drugs and moving from the arms of one man to another. Rocky faces the daily challenges life imposes on him, always with dignity, optimism, and a good dose of irony, managing to become a point of reference for his schoolmates. However, he detests the fact that his mother continues to use drugs, and does everything he can to make her stop. It seems he is the parent and she the child, and she tries: she attempts several times to detoxify to make her beloved son happy. Partly to escape everyday life, partly for pure fun, Rocky accepts a summer job as a guide and assistant at a camp for blind teenagers. It is here he meets the young Diana (Laura Dern), with whom a pure and delicate feeling is born, yet ruined by the prejudices of her family, who prevent her from continuing the relationship. During those days, even the boy's best friend leaves him to move to another city. Every hope collapses, every plan fades, and one night Rocky, having lost his driving force, his optimism, dies, leaving his mother Rusty alone and desperate, unable to recover from the loss although she has managed, thanks to her son's support, to escape from the tunnel of drugs. Bogdanovich tells the true story of Rocky and Rusty Dennis with candor, modesty, and sensitivity. The rest is due to the actors.
At that time, Stoltz was a youngster at the beginning of his cinematic experiences, and Cher was in her first starring role; moreover, up until then, she had only played comedic roles (apart from the role of Sissy on stage in «Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean» and a secondary role in «Silkwood»), so both critics and the general public did not believe the two were capable of such a highly dramatic performance. I believe this is Cher's best acting performance, which in my opinion deserved the Oscar more for this film than for «Moonstruck». Throughout the film, the viewer does not feel particular discomfort: the story is so clean that the protagonist's deformity and disease fade into the background, but the suffering returns with all its intensity in the final scene, where Rusty discovers Rocky's lifeless body. A scene of extraordinary intensity and drama that qualified Cher as a complete actress and made this film a milestone in her career.
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