Small Body

In Laura Samani’s debut feature a young woman in rural Italy sets off on a journey to save her daughter’s soul.

The opening scenes of Small Body, the debut feature from the Italian filmmaker Laura Samani, are absolutely wonderful. There is nothing elaborate about them visually but with great directness and seeming simplicity they take us directly into the life of a fishing community for whom religious faith plays a key role. This is the early part of the 20th century and we first see the film’s central character, Agata (Celeste Cescutti), surrounded by womenfolk on the seashore. She is undergoing a religious rite marking the fact that she is about to give birth for the first time. Both the atmosphere and the time in which the story is set are strongly evoked and central to this is Samani's use of sounds. Words as such are minimal in the film’s first scene but the soundtrack with its emphasis on devotional wordless music and also on the sounds of the sea ensures that we wholly believe that this is a past age, one which finds the veiled Agata participating in the ceremony as a means of banning misfortune and letting the Virgin Mary come in.

Moving at once to an interior scene in which Agata starkly endures the pain of childbirth, any idea of expecting to avoid misfortune becomes tragically ironic. Agata does have a baby girl but the child is stillborn and her husband burns the body believing that nothing can be done to enable the child’s soul to go to heaven. It is an accepted doctrine in this community that to die unbaptised precludes this possibility. But, being a mother, Agata readily believes in stories of a distant church where the dead have been brought back to life long enough for baptism to take place. Small Body is the story of how, with the body of the dead baby carried on her back in the box used for burial, Agata takes a long journey north to the valley where the miracle is said to be possible. She starts off alone but en route gains a companion in Lynx (Ondina Quadri), someone whose motives are questionable: a bond may seem to grow between them and Lynx does know the way but it is quite possible that Agata is being exploited by her guide.

These two travellers encounter other people on their journey but are very much the central figures in the tale which is certainly episodic. That can be a disadvantage when you want to compel the viewer’s attention throughout, but the real problem that emerges in the case of Small Body is of a different kind and it concerns the way in which the style of the piece keeps changing. Instead of managing a natural growth into something different, it feels ill-considered and inadequately allowed for by Samani and her co-writers. Initially the conviction achieved by the film makes us regard the story as a naturalistic period tale. Subsequently, however, the events of the journey come to seem contrived in a way that suggests something closer to fable, legend or fairytale. If adroitly managed, such a change of tone might work well enough but it happens here in a way that feels inadvertent. On top of that what could be described as a plot twist emerges now and it disturbs because it feels so contemporary as to seem out of place in this period setting.

In contrast to that, Small Body comes across most persuasively as a story told from a woman's viewpoint, a fact that is in tune with current cinema trends but which at the same time fits the setting well enough because the central focus throughout is on the intense bond that a mother feels with her child, alive or dead. However, the consistency of that theme does not prevent the film from changing character yet again in its final section. Samani has acknowledged that she has a spiritual outlook on life but she seems to link it more with superstition and sources of energy than with the beliefs of the Catholic Church. The last scenes in Small Body are open to individual interpretation but, whether or not endorsing religion, they are presented in images that rely on a symbolism not present earlier on. The two leading players do well and, as indicated, Samani’s direction is at times remarkably distinguished, but sadly when considered as a whole, Small Body is not persuasive as a work that coheres in a meaningful way.

Original title: Piccolo corpo.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Celeste Cescutti, Ondina Quadri, Marco Geromin.

Dir Laura Samani, Pro Nadia Trevisan and Alberto Fasulo, Screenplay Marco Borromei, Elisa Dondi and Laura Samani, from a story by Laura Samani, Ph Mitja Licen, Art Dir Rachele Meliadò, Ed Chiara Dainese, Music Fredrika Stahl, Costumes Loredana Buscemi.

Nefertiti Film/Tomsa Films/Vertigo/Rai Cinema-Other Parties Film Company.
89 mins. Italy/France/Slovenia/Croatia/Serbia. 2021. UK Rel: 8 April 2022. Cert. 12A.