Review L’Immensità – Review on FilmTotaal
Director: Emanuele Crialese | Script: Emanuele Crialese | Cast: Penelope Cruz (Clara), Vincenzo Amato (Felice), Luana Giuliani (Adriana/Adri), Patrizio Francioni (Gino), Maria Chiara Goretti (Diana), ea | Time to play: 97 minutes | Year: 2022
Penelope Cruz is back in full force. Not that she’s ever gone. She was still shining two years ago Parallel Mothersthe best of Pedro Almodóvar in years, last year he starred in the satirical Official Competition and then appeared in the art house drama on the margins. This week Spanish shines again in Italian the immensity.
The film is the work of Sicilian Emanuele Crialese, a filmmaker who caused international furor with once we were strangers in The new World with Charlotte Gainsbourg. In 2022, he came out as transgender while filming his movie. the immensity presented at the Venice Film Festival. The film is inspired by his own experiences and in that sense a bit of something. The Fabelmans for Spielberg, but without touches of Hollywood.
The setting is the Italy of the seventies. It shows in every detail of the décor, from the black-and-white television featuring performances by pop stars like Adriano Celentano and Raffaella Carrà to the floral wallpaper.
Clara is a young mother of three children trying to get the best out of life. She is always in a good mood and tries to give her children everything she can. Unfortunately, the father of the house is a clumsy brute. He cheats on and abuses his wife in front of the children.
Thirteen-year-old Adriana, stunningly played by the natural talent of Luana Giuliani, finds her mother in an identity crisis. She understands the emergency very well because she doesn’t feel well either because she would rather be a child. The father does not know what to make of this and rejects his daughter.
the immensity it deals with pretty heavy topics like domestic violence, but it feels light-hearted. Typically Italian with a touch of Federico Fellini, or Paolo Sorrentino for a more modern comparison. Even in the darkest moments there is room for some light. Emanuele Crialese shows this with scenes in which pop songs are sung; in black and white as the characters saw it on television in the 70s.
although the immensity a bit like Luana Giuliani’s movie as Crialese’s alter ego Adriana, Penelope Cruz leaps off the screen every second. Forceful as the housewife who, despite her humiliations and blows, always smiles and realizes that she is the support and refuge of her children, who simply do not feel disgusted by her own father .
Doubt about gender is only a part the immensity which can be described as a sparkling comedy that strikes a balance between Italian neorealism and the Italian comedy that Ettore Scola was so good at, for example.
the immensity It may bear the stamp of the art house, but this is above all cinema to be enjoyed, even if they are stories of people who yearn for a better and different life. A film about accepting who you are and who you want to be or become, and which mainly asks questions about what exactly is normal.