Film Review
Nanni Moretti's poignant tale of family bereavement,
La Stanza del figlio, was
a surprising but worthy winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001. Moretti,
who also stars in the film, uses an approach which is strikingly direct in its humanity,
managing to avoid excessive sentimentality and melodrama.
Thanks largely to some credible performances, it is easy for the audience to identify
with the film's protagonists and to share their grief and their love of life. Some
spectators may perhaps cringe at the all too perfect family in which teenage children
not only speak to their parents but share their leisure time together. However,
it is possibly the fact that the family functions so well which makes the sense of tragedy,
when it strikes, all the more acute.
The intense melancholy of the subject is subtly lifted with some pleasing comic touches
(perhaps following the example of Roberto Benigni's
La Vita è bella (1997)),
so that the film is poignant but not depressing. The death of a child is perhaps
the hardest thing a parent can endure, and the film makes that abundantly clear (Italians
are not, after all, renowned for their lack of emotion). Yet, at the same time, it
shows how that grief can be lived through and the wound ultimately healed. It
is with sublime delicacy that Moretti reminds us that
coping with loss is an essential part of life.
© James Travers 2002
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Film Synopsis
Giovanni is a psychoanalyst whose life is up-ended one day when his son, Andrea, is killed
in a scuba diving accident. As the family struggles to comes to term with their
loss, they receive an unexpected visit from a young girl whom Andrea met on holiday…
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.