L'immensità

A Spanish woman (Penelope Cruz) marries an Italian jerk (Vincenzo Amato) that, after making her three kids, starts cheating on her. She tries to keep her marriage together and her kids oblivious of the drama she goes through, but the situation is so bad that even the kids realize that in their family love is just a word. One of the kids, Adri, is a girl that dreams to be a boy - and acts towards that, dressing like a boy and pretending to be called Andrea, not Adriana.

This is the starting point (you learn all this in the first five minutes) - but the story doesn't really go anywhere, it's just a collection of moments in the dissolution of a plausible family (my father and a lot of his friends were just like Felice - yes, women really had a very hard time in the 70s).

So don't watch this movie for the story, watch it for Penelope. She's amazing.

I love art house Italian films from the 1970s so I wanted to see L'immensita but I found myself underwhelmed. The film is pretty, but not beautiful. It's artful but not terribly interesting. The musical moments were lovely but did not uplift a claustrophobic tale about a 12 year old trans boy obsessed with his unhappy mother. The emphasis here is on the experience of late childhood and puberty, the suffering of a trans adolescent resisting their given gender role in traditional society, and there's little escape into the wider world of Rome in the 1970s beyond a tween's impression taken from movies and television.

The movie is mostly sad and boring, and while I sympathize with the director I guess I am just not the target audience here. Also, I felt that the mother's supposed mental illness was too understated, too subtle. I didn't get that she was crazy, just miserable and looking for joy where she could find it with her kids, as she certainly couldn't have it with her husband.

This movie is, for the admission of his on author, inspired to Crialese's childhood. I could feel from the beginning to the end the difficulty of Andrea to accept his body, the inability to watch himself on the mirror or to show himself shirtless in front of other. Some amusement helps counterbalance the heaviness of the family situation, I'm referring to the musical parts of the movie which are not only beautifully shot but help understanding how the central character would like to be seen by others, in contrast to what he sees looking at the mirror. Sure, this is not an action movie, you won't find a clear villain (although certainly the father does not come out well) or an ending, yet it kept me glued to the screen for the whole duration of the film.

Saw this back at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

L'immensita is a story about the love between the character Clara and her children, set in Rome in the '70s. Emanuele Crialese previous films has proven he has talent with directing, production and narrative style as I have enjoyed his previous works. Unfortunately while L'immensità is well performed from Penélope Cruz and extremely colorful production and camerawork, the film suffers from an uneven tone and generic narrative.

The narrative is pretty simple and each moment that happens was pretty predictable of what steps it was heading for. The tone of the film is the most confusing part as the film isn't sure if the film wants to become a drama, comedy or comedy-drama at the same time. Most of the characters were not as interesting as Crialese thinks they were as many of their arches felt underdeveloped and dull. While Cruz's performance was fantastic, the child performances were a mix of being decent or pretty poor. I don't like to criticize child actors since I understand they aren't as professional as adult actors but the uneven performance does feel distracting at times.

The film isn't fully terrible as the soundtrack is pretty good, the production and camerawork is colorful and fits the time period, and the film doesn't have a bad pacing which does help to make the film still be interesting at certain levels. But the film could have use some work with better writing and characters. Overall, there are some interesting moments but the uneven narrative and weak characters wasn't able to fully make the film as impactful as it wants to be.

Rating: C+

L'immensità is a strange film. It certainly has no obvious problems and is technically well made. Penelope Cruz is a joy in every scene, and it is nice that she has committed to acting in Italian.

It is not clear what direction the film would like to take, however; different concepts and situations seem inconsistent and unconnected, and for a character-driven film they are all superficially portrayed. It is not clear what the characters think and why they do what they do. It is then not clear what the film wants to tell us.

The child actors are not professionals and it is very visible, especially for the one with the lead role. I recognise that it was a complex part but the character comes across as almost apathetic.

Unfortunately, I couldn't really find the "why" for this film to be, but it could certainly be very much appreciated by someone with a sensitivity closer to what it wants to tell us.