Rossosperanza

There are films that act as spells, using the power of cinema – its ability to reinvent possible realities – to break spells to which we are (or have been) subjected. It is no coincidence that from the very first images appears the magical instrument, a record, which at the same time carries a precise historical date, 1990, and the act through which time can be freed, the scratching back and forth along the circles of the recording. The music will turn into noise, unpleasant at first, but other ears will know how to turn it into music and begin new dances.

You are catapulted into the trap of the wealthy nineties: parents ensnared by hedonism to soothe the political wounds of the past, adolescents raised in ease to whom remain only the exploration of their desire as the only form of revolt in a destroyed social fabric. Thus come together the stories of Nazzarena (an intense Margherita Morellini), Sociopath who assaults the life of family friend bishop, Alfonso (a vibrant Leonardo Giuliani), a boy who cannot repress his homosexuality in front of a Christian Democrat father, Marzia (the exuberant Ludovica Rubino), ready to become one of the baby divas of Non è la RAI possessing the desire more than those " daddies " ready to dominate her, and Vittoriano (an ineffable Luca Varone), who absorbs the collective trauma of a generation that has seen human affections and relationships replaced with consumer goods. Their action in the present is limited to exercises of control of their self in a re-education house for upper middle-class boys, their past continues to overwhelm them by throwing them into an ocean of conflicting emotions, their only enemy seems to be that "father" who returns with different appearances but in the body of a single actor, to symbolize an Italy ready to fall into the trap of Berlusconi's control.

After dealing with a debated theme such as the brigadiers who fled Italy following the armed struggle (After the war, presented at Un Certain Regard in Cannes in 2018), Annarita Zambrano continues to invent a new political cinema, staging the only subversion left to generation X, the one that today has resulted in the liberation of bodies and LGBTQI struggles. But the film doesn't stop there. The rebellion passes through the choice to reinvent the cinematographic narration, freeing it from the usual realism to meet grotesque moments that open up to glimpses of lyricism when the cage of a tiger is recreated by pure light, symbol of something from which it is very difficult to escape without eclipsing oneself in the dark.

Daniela Persico