Nostalgia

Home is where the heart is?

The protagonist of this beautiful Italian film is hunting for what once was. Pierfrancesco Favino plays Felice, who returns to his hometown of Naples after 40 years. He finds that the city has not changed since he hastily left there as a 15-year-old. Well, that's what he believes and his naive upbringing of his hometown is conveyed to us as viewers. We would like to believe him. But sense problems. Felice almost ran away after a serious incident involving both him and his best friend growing up. The filmmakers take a long time to tell us what happened, and I won't give away anything here.

The film shows with insight what different path choices do to people over time. It's just that the protagonist fails to take this perspective into account. He longs to return to something that no longer exists.

The film is slow and lingering. Beautifully photographed. Excellent acting performances from all the cast. I understand very well that this was Italy's Oscar candidate the year it came out.

Watch it because you want to see Naples through the eyes and feelings of the main character. Watch it because it's something different from 90 percent of what goes on in theaters and is streamed. Here are real emotions, hope, longing and sadness.

This is the kind of movie that is very strange to me. Don't tell that to anyone, but coming from a Sicilian family, anything that happens in a city where the Napolitan mafia scares everyone, looks very familiar. Felice left Napoli 40 years before, and comes back to a city that looks like what he remembers, but feels completely different. He first comes back to see his dying mom, and spend some times with her before going back to his wife in Egypt. After 40 years, Felice has become Muslim, and has troubles speaking Italian (he usually speaks Arabic). He comes back to a Catholic Napoli, where the Catholic priest is leading the war against the Camorra, and its boss 'O malommo' (the bad man). Felice reminisces about his past, about an 'Oreste' that was his best friend, who defended him and helped him in every way, and you wonder what happened to him. As you go through his childhood in Napoli, the parallel is made with current Napoli, with the Catholic priest showing Felice that not everything is great, but that he is trying and giving everything he can to the kids of the neighbourhood, so that they get out of the Camorra's influence. The actors are great, and the story all too familiar to me, and I really liked that movie. Yes, the ending is expected, but it couldn't have been any other way.

This is a plot which has already been used before: the lead character who comes back home after many years away and who suddenly finds out all the changes that occured during his - or her - absence. Italian movies have already given us such topics: FORGET PALERMO. Or French LE FILS from Pierre Granier Deferra, starring Yves Montand. More or less same scheme. This movie which I review now is full of nostaligia, as its title says, It is not a crime film, but a drama with some social elements about Italy today. With of course the Mafia and church influence on the Italian society. It is rather dark, a bit gloomy but beautiful, really worth the view. Flawless acting and directing too; excellent camera work.

It's a really beautiful movie, especially the visuals. You don't see the typical Napoli, the one from the post cards or the tourism agencies. Instead you see the real one, the poor families, the mafia, the struggle, and most importantly, the desire of the people to survive. It felt so real, I never lived what the characters went through but at some moments, it really felt like the things on screen had happened to me before. The writing is also really good, the way the elements are brought is not heavy, and even if we don't have all the cards to understand at the beginning, we don't feel left out. Things we see at the beginning of the movie make sense when they happen, and even more sense once we get the full picture. It was also refreshing to see bits of Arabic culture, instead of having a really cliché view of it. I loved watching it, but i think if i had to watch it on my own, instead that at the movie theater, I wouldn't have been 100% focused on it and I guess I would have been bored at some point. Despite that, I still recommend it.

In Mario Martone's low key film, a Neapolitan man (played by Pierfrancesco Favino), who has lived abroad for many years, returns to the impoverished neighbourhood where he grew up, and where his mother, and his demons, still live. The movie captures much of the feel of Naples and its poorer districts, and of the close-knit (but not necessarily happy) communities that live there. The ambiguity of feeling on both sides is convinving: this is the story of a man both a stranger and at home. But for me it loses a star because I found the ending jarring, and not completely justified by what had gone before.