Susanna Nicchiarelli
Cosmonauta

In Italian cinema, it is quite common for debut directors to focus on "coming-of-age" stories, depicting the anxieties, crises, doubts, awaited happiness, and desperate pains of the young when encountering the adult world: Italian cinema in recent decades is full of examples. Just think, among others, of Archibugi's "Mignon è partita", Kim Rossi Stuart's "Anche libero va bene", or even - albeit with slightly different touches - Gianni Zanasi's "Non pensarci", or Fabrizio Bentivoglio's "Lascia perdere Johnny", not to mention the examples in Brizzi's "Notte prima...". That this genre partly pays off at the box office is also explained by the attempts of already known and appreciated directors, like Daniele Lucchetti in "Mio fratello è figlio unico".

Susanna Nicchiarelli's film is no exception, placing itself in the wake of the aforementioned examples in the depiction of the growth paths of a teenager, Luciana, in the outskirts of Rome in the '50s and '60s. It serves as not too veiled a pretext for reflecting on the adult world of the time, encapsulated here by the familial and social context in which the young girl moves: the brother, who is epileptic and has a slight mental handicap, with whom she shares a deep bond of affection, disturbed by the awareness that closeness to a different individual ends up making her different too, limiting her freedom and making her the object of ridicule at school or among friends; the working-class family with petty-bourgeois ambitions, embodied by the stepfather well played by Sergio Rubini and the mother, already widowed and disillusioned, seeking economic serenity in times of great difficulty, portrayed as a - relatively dowdied - Claudia Pandolfi, in her first mature role in cinema; the PCI club in Trullo, agitated by the presence of adults (interpreted by Nicchiarelli herself and a talented Angelo Orlando) who still believe in the Idea, with great acrimony towards "socialist traitors", and by young people trying now to imitate paternal models, now to detach themselves from them through combative tones and actions, but ultimately falling into errors and contradictions probably even sharper than those of the previous generations.

Luciana's formation is described by the director with heartfelt participation - likely some autobiographical touches in the story - revolving around a series of contrasts that isolate Luciana from the context in which she lives, making her alien to the world of the majority, while endowed with a "clear-sighted clairvoyance" regarding the miseries of adult life, much like the Russian cosmonauts adored by her and her brother as symbols of a possible progress, alternative to the capitalist model.

Therefore, the contrasts are stark concerning her brother's "anomaly", initially hidden and subsequently exploding to the brink of drama; in relation to the young people of the communist club, apparently modern but insidiously petty in their chauvinism and in considering women as objects; concerning her mother who seems to betray the memory of her deceased husband by marrying, for convenience, someone completely opposite to Luciana's father, "betraying" her own past just like the socialists who, on a political level, have "betrayed" the communist ideal and the class struggle; concerning the Party's representatives themselves, revolutionary only in appearance, but nonetheless seeking respectability and social acceptance, devoted to compromise and frightened as soon as a modest and affable marshal of the Carabinieri approaches the club's threshold.

In these contrasts, and apparent diversity, the protagonist lives and grows.

I say the diversity is "apparent" because the protagonist, in her actions, makes mistakes perhaps no less serious than those of the people she opposes, proving to be, in essence, not much better than the "others" she opposes and from whom she wants to distinguish herself: the repressed hate towards her brother is already mentioned, in a relationship that the film's ending seems to pacify but without much conviction; but we can also refer to the fierce opposition towards a "fascist" stepfather merely for enforcing rules, yet portrayed as a lonely and perhaps weaker man - along with her mother - than he appears; to Luciana's exploitation of her first boyfriend to compete for the attention of the "handsome" from the circle, which triggers competition with a girlfriend, or the violence against the socialist headquarters, where she seems to anticipate the violence that would follow in the '70s, perpetrated by all the just slightly older Lucianas (and "Lucianis").

The film's greatest merit is precisely not sparing, between the lines, a touch of sarcasm towards the protagonist herself, even if tempered by some indulgence stemming from the affection that everyone, from the director to the audience, ends up feeling for her - for being an ugly but resolute duckling - combining the poetry of a girl's naive expectations, who, like everyone, makes mistakes simply by wanting to act and live her time, with the prose of a bleak Roman suburb where the only recognizable construction to be glimpsed is the "Square Colosseum" of EUR and where dawn on the sea is seen, with effective and in its own way brilliant synthesis, not from the shore, but from the steps of the beach resorts, with the huts fragmenting every possible infinity like an insurmountable concrete hedge, which strongly reminded me of Montale's "sad wonder".

The fact that it was not the Russian cosmonauts but the American astronauts who went to the Moon confirms, after all, how the infinite journeys of Luciana's adolescence had to clash with the concreteness of events, which day after day consume everyone's future, encapsulating us, often powerless, like Laika the dog on her first and last journey to the stars.