The film’s 3 protagonists: Giulia, Guido and their swimming pool

The film runs 3 main parallel plot lines: the semi-successful writing career of Guido (Valerio Mastandrea), his deteriorating family structure until separation from his wife and daughter, the encounter of Guido with Giulia (Valeria Golino) – his daughter’s swimming instructor by day and as later revealed – a prison inmate by night. Hence, the movie title “Giulia non esce la sera – Giulia Doesn’t Date at Night”

As the relationship develops between Giulia and Guido, mostly emanating from the personal swimming classes Giulia provides Guido, Picconi vividly shows us the clear fault lines around us. In one of the many swimming pool scenes, Giulia brings Guido underwater to see the world from an unusual point of view – a wondrous twilight zone where all people are the same as they try to negotiate their way in the water.

The tables are radically turned when Guido needs to face questions about her past and fulfill her prison parole duties – off water. Confronted with Guido’s harsh prison reality and the reason why she ended up behind bars, you begin to realize that the swimming pool is Giulia’s only salvage, the only place where she can command control on others and at the same time can take stoke on her life from afar.

I especially liked Giulia’s blank facial expressions as she holds in her true story and how difficult it is to break down her defense walls she had built to fend off past ordeals from reappearing or new relationships with Guido to easily exist. True, it’s a natural survival instinct to learn from the past, however sometimes at the risk of generalizing and missing out on truly solid opportunities to connect and grow.

Some memorable visual signifiers include: the half vacated apartment Guido lives in, an effective internal representation of his life after his wife and daughter left him; the recurring appearance of the windows’ white shades the wind blows, which seems to indicate that winds of change are coming; and the numerous swimming pool scenes, signifying as mentioned above, an alternate reality, that also plays as the unassuming context/pretext for the relationship between Giulia and Guido to develop.

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As viewer, the film takes you on a journey where some elements are gradually revealed about its protagonists; a conflict is detected, solution is attempted sending rings of impact on sub-plots – packaged nicely with the emotive theme soundtrack by Baustelle, sung in part by Valeria Goilino. Beautiful!

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This is an intense shot on reality. When we say the eloquence of silence. He makes the silence speak. Slowly, sweetly, deeply. Black and white, and we are already into a poem. Every single shot is a portrait of truth. It’s amazing the power of these images. We don’t need to speak to be understood if who is watching us can read a little deeper. Sorrentino can really drill through the soul of his characters.

A strong message towards the truth. A kind of, just be yourself. But also a message of being close to others, because anything in life is related to others. The match, with your companions, and the team work. And no matter who they are, young, old, father, friends, they are your team players. You have to trust all of them.

Very interesting the choice of a rugby match, an unusual sport in Italy, that gives the sense of team, of fighting together, where the compact strength of the group is very important.

A masculine message if you want, a message for men. However with no macho input at all. Instead an invitation maybe to reconsider the natural meaning of being a man, from the basic.

The location. A field in the suburbs of a big town. Where we think a strong message of hope is even more needed. And where the ground for simple values could be uncertain as well as more natural at the same time.

The characters. A simple working class family, very sweet and very true. There is this strong tight shred that links the whole thing. The grandma, the father, the mother, the son. What a cute picture. The family, an important value to support and to pursue for mutual benefits of all its components. Family as the first strong starting point for building a good sense of trust towards yourself, the others and the future. It’s a lovely movie, intense and rich. And artistically wonderful.

Buona visione.

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Can movies, as mirrors to reality, change it and give hope, especially in dark moments?

The answer is resounding yes, but “Per Fiducia” (“Through Trust”), a spirit-lifting project that with its three films wants to show the positive values that animates and drives Italy today.

When you think of all the myriad of phenomena we take for granted such as legal contracts, airport baggage checks, surveillance cameras, keys, borders and so on – these are all elements that were invented as a result of a slight “bug” in the human brain that sometimes takes over: the need to “game” the system at the expense of others.

And since most people got hit too many times, the issue of trust has become a well-regarded currency you share with just a few people you absolutely know and have established relationships with. Your best friend asks you can you lend me your car this evening I have an important date? Sure thing! Coming from a stranger – no way!

Maral Kinran and Stefania Berselli in a moment of uncertainty

In this film, director Ermanno Olmi returns to a familiar environment he has already explored in Tickets (Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach – 2005) – the train. The film tells the story of 3 teenagers that ride the train after winning first prize in a science technology contest for a smart, yet fashionable bracelet designed for kids with diabetes.

The contest is over, the temporary rush of winning was great, but what next? The prototype still needs money in order to turn it into a real product. Matteo (Matteo Bessone) ponders deeply this question. His partners, Stefania (Stefania Berselli) and Maral (Maral Kinran) reflect on this as well, as their faces are reflected in the window, superimposed over the moving landscape. Where are we headed? What’s in store for us when we get there?

Trains have been used in many films to portray life line itself. We’re all passengers who share the same train for just a short while. The movement forward indicates the passing time towards an unknown future, where the stations may signify milestones or opportunities along the way.

The chance encounter of the teenagers with the important professor (Maurizio Marchetti), on the train, initially plays out the common distrusts we come across when facing with sudden requests from complete strangers.

In this case, I liked the utter silence that came out from the professor’s collaborator (Marco Constantini). This is Olmi’s at his best. The person who speaks (professor) and shapes the reality is minor to the facial expressions of those that surround him, in this case the collaborator – that processes the verbal exchange and without saying a word, projects an utter distrust. Less is so much more.

The soundtrack with its grand entrance-feel of trumpets keeps reminding us of new beginnings; new ideas by young generations that take place everywhere. They may be delayed here and there due to some temporary setbacks, but they will finally arrive and make their mark.

The film’s universal message is loud and clear. Despite human innate suspicion due to the above described “bug” and occasional superficiality (enter Susan Boyle case), sprinkling a bit of trust around us can go a long way for a far better world.

Try it next time, you’re faced with the instinctive urge to dismiss something as distrustful and not help.

You can view the entire film below (10:15 minutes), and with English subtitles – here:

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Great excitement for this movie which is again from and about Sardinia. The fact that the director was there presenting the film and holding the discussion makes it even more interesting.

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Sonetaula is a book by Giuseppe Fiori that he recently re-wrote and shortened. It is set up in a decade between 1938 and 1948 (more or less) in the island of Sardinia, inland, in the shepherd’s most true world.

Sonetaula is the name of our character, in reality a nick name, which means sound of wood, since he was very skinny.

Sonetaula follows the story of many other children in a typical village of Sardinia. He has to help the father to tend his flock, because he has to go to work in a factory in Italy, he would make more money, he said. Poor people, after war, hoping to have a chance to change their lives. However, we will discover that this is not the truth.

Sonetaula is a young boy victim of his culture. In the mountain, in the cold, in the freezing solitude of woods and sheep, one day, founding out that his friends stole one of his sheep he goes and kills 20 of theirs.

It’s a revenge imposed by the shepherd culture, where you have to protect what is yours at all costs and teach others that you are stronger.

This act will mark his life and his future won’t have chances for salvation, unfortunately. Rejected now by a people that is trying to emerge from its millenary absence from the evolution, that is rejecting its archaic pastoral existence rules, Sonetaula is left alone with his life of bandit.

Maybe only 23 or 24 years old, Sonetaula, unable to trust and surrender to justice because too far from his known living codes, he plays his last card making an escape agreement with an ‘important person’, the ingegnere. A person reasonably trusted because of his high social position that, instead, has other interests than saving a poor shepherd life.

This movie has of course the charm of a neorealist movie. They took one year to shoot it, in real places, with real people, I mean non professional actors, and with real seasons, the director says. A photography very effective though, with major technological touches, maybe too many to be authentically neorealist. Nevertheless, valuable for its strong ability to make looks, silences, thoughts, feelings, talk.

However, Salvatore Mereu is not giving his true poetry, like he did in Ballo a Tre Passi. Fair enough, we know he will again.