L'immensità
Emanuele Crialese’s misjudged study of his early life in 1970s’ Rome should nevertheless be seen.
This film by Emanuele Crialese contains a number of very persuasive performances as well as one which counts as being among the year’s best to date. In the circumstances it may appear that my rating for L’immensità is unduly low. But the fact of the matter is that this work, which finds Crialese basing it on material that is to some extent autobiographical, brings together two themes neither of which is handled here in a way that really satisfies. The first of these offers a portrayal of childhood. Here there is particular emphasis on the relationship between Adri (Luana Giuliani) and Adri’s mother, Clara (Penélope Cruz). The second is the exploration of what it meant in the 1970s to be growing up as a girl who identified as a boy. That is the situation in which 12-year-old Adri, who prefers to be known as Andrew, finds herself and it was also the case for Crialese himself who only recently acknowledged that he had been born female and had transitioned. Adri's mother is portrayed as a lively free spirit but also as someone unhappily married who succumbs to a mental breakdown and all of that echoes the situation portrayed in Crialese’s first Italian feature film, 2002’s Respiro. This suggests that the family situation may in itself be fully autobiographical, but what is beyond question is that Adri represents the young Crialese and in recreating her world Crialese is a filmmaker looking back on his own childhood experience.
Although Crialese made his first feature film in 1997 and was born in 1965, this is only his fifth feature and not least in the UK he lacks a name that would sell a film. Consequently, it is the presence of Penélope Cruz in the cast that is the film’s biggest draw. To fit the actress, Clara is said to be Spanish and several references are made by Adri to how beautiful her mother is. Furthermore, Cruz is self-evidently sufficiently talented to handle the drama that develops when it becomes clear that Clara has mental health problems. Hers is indeed a good performance and the only slight drawback is that for many audiences this will be a film of unknown faces centred on a single family. That encourages one to think of this film as being an ensemble piece and Cruz’s familiar presence is consequently less than ideal although it can be said that the quality of her acting largely overcomes that.
Vincenzo Amato who plays the role of Clara’s husband, Felice, will also be a familiar face in Italy where he is well established and, indeed, known as a player in several of Crialese’s films. Elsewhere he is less likely to be recognised and his role here makes him a somewhat subsidiary figure and also a rather stereotypical one (Felice’s first scenes count for little and later, when he is shown to be abusive and unfaithful, he comes across as a standard Mr Nasty rather than anything more individual). In contrast to that Adri’s two younger siblings, Gino (Patrizio Francioni) and Diana (Maria Chiara Goretti), are distinctively drawn and the two child players are very good indeed. Even so, the performance that steals the film is that of Luana Giuliani in the key role of Adri. There may be some viewers who sign up to the belief that casting must echo real-life and who therefore take the view that because this young actress is not trans she should not have been allowed to play this part. But in that context the fact that Adri is in effect Crialese and that he has himself chosen Giuliani for the role could hardly be more significant. In any case her utterly persuasive interpretation justifies his choice in the most remarkable way.
Faced with this wonderful acting, one regrets all the more that L’immensità feels such an inadequate film. With transgender issues being so much discussed these days to have a film on that subject may itself bring in an audience but, because such a short period in her life is covered, Adri’s story never truly leads anywhere. The narrative does eventually incorporate Adri’s belated discovery that Sara (Penélope Nieto Conti), a girl who had accepted her as a boy and to whom she had felt a definite attachment, has vanished from her life. This does provide drama but no resolution and no deeply felt climax either (the weight of her loss could be more fully conveyed). Anyone choosing to see this film because it centres on a young trans person will find it admirably persuasive but will surely be disappointed that it stops short as it does.
On the other hand, some will approach L’immensità as being first and foremost a study of childhood in a past era. On that level the film, however meaningful to Crialese himself, is for the viewer a work that merely offers inconsequential impressions of those days, individual scenes that lack any real narrative flow. Indeed, the first dramatic plot development only arrives some fifty minutes into the film. Furthermore, there is a conflict here between those scenes which show things realistically through the eyes of the young Adri and a conscious recreation of the past by Crialese which is often stylised. A pre-credit sequence shows Clara and the children setting the table in a scene that is presented as a dance set to music from a record player and this is done in a way that suggests not a spirited reality but an elaboration by a director. Then, later on, the black-and-white television screens of the day lead into actual musical sequences also in black-and-white which briefly take over the entire screen. Whether or not this works, such touches represent the filmmaker’s fanciful viewpoint as he looks back while, in contrast, the film never really gets to grips with Clara's mental breakdown because like so much of the film it is viewed through the eyes of Adri who is too young to understand. By adopting two very different and inconsistent approaches in turn Crialese has inevitably ended up with a mishmash lacking in any sense of cohesion.
With so much not working here I could not but be disappointed. Nevertheless, in spite of that, I do regard this as a film that should be seen: Luana Giuliani's achievement is so remarkable that it should not be missed.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Luana Giuliani, Vincenzo Amato, Patrizio Francioni, Maria Chiara Goretti, Penélope Nieto Conti, Alvia Reale, India Santella, Mariangela Granelli, Carlo Gallo, Rita De Donato, Valentina Cenni.
Dir Emanuele Crialese, Pro Mario Gianini and Lorenzo Gangarossa, Screenplay Emanuele Crialese, Francesca Manieri and Vittorio Moroni, from a story by Emanuele Crialese, Ph Gergely Pohárnok, Pro Des Dimitri Capuani, Ed Clelio Benevento, Music Rauelsson, Costumes Massimo Cantini Parrini.
Wildside/Chapter 2/France 3 Cinéma/Pathé, Warner Bros. Entertainment Italia/Canal+-Curzon.
99 mins. Italy/France. 2022. US Rel: 12 May 2023. UK Rel: 11 August 2023. Cert. 12A.
