Respiro

Emanuele Crialese's Respiro is alive, sensual, and transcendent. Set in Lampedusa, an island southwest of Sicily, it is a film about mothers and sons, accepting differences, and the power of love to bring renewal and reconciliation. Gorgeously filmed by cinematographer Fabio Zamarion, Respiro captivates us with its bright Mediterranean sunlight and the expressive faces of the people, tanned and strikingly beautiful. Winner of the 2002 Cannes Critics Week award, the film is based on a local legend about a mother whose behavior was found to be offensive by the community and whose subsequent disappearance was the catalyst that brought the people together. Crialese's film has the feeling of myth and legend but also the overtones of the great Italian realist dramas of the 50s and 60s.

As gangs of unsupervised pre-teens carry out intermittent warfare among the desolate beaches and rocky landscapes, everyday life centers on fishing. While the husbands do the fishing, wives work in the fish processing plant and the boys help out their fathers and catch fish to use as trade for a chance to win an electric train set. Grazia (Valeria Golino) is the wife of macho but loving fisherman, Pietro (Vincenzo Amato) and mother of three: 13-year old Pasquale (Francesco Casisa), younger brother Filippo (Filippo Pucillo), and older sister Marinella (Veronica D'Agostino). Golina is radiant as the headstrong young mother and Casisa's performance as Pasquale completely captures the budding sexual awareness of a pre-teen. The film reflects the warmth of the Italian family and the closeness that Italian sons feel for their mothers but also depicts the old-fashioned attitudes of the tight-knit community, especially the subjugation of women.

In a revealing scene, Pasquale's brother, the adorable but mouthy Filippo and his friends follow his older sister Marinella to a private meeting place where she is seeking privacy with a shy young policeman, Pier Luigi (Elio Germano). Affronted by their seeming public display of affection, Filippo, less than half their size, confronts the two lovers and threatens to beat them up unless his sister goes home immediately. Unfortunately, everything is not right on the island. Grazia's behavior is increasingly defined by erratic mood swings. She flings dishes across the room, swims naked with her sons, and releases a herd of dogs from captivity, but it is not clear if she is ill or just rebellious and the film walks a tightrope between suggesting madness or the eccentricities of a free spirit.

It is soon apparent that the community has their own thoughts about her actions and she is seen as a threat to the social order. When Grazia's antics threaten to reach the breaking point, Pietro's family decides to send her to Milan to receive psychiatric treatment. Pasquale, however, always understanding and protective of his mother, hides her in one of the many caves along the rocky shore, bringing her food and reporting news of the search for her whereabouts. The ending can be interpreted in many different ways but I was touched by its haunting beauty. Is it to be taken literally, a dream of Pasquale's perhaps, or a fairy tale constructed from legend? I'm not sure but in any case, Respiro's combination of magic realism, natural beauty, and humanistic message will have you pricing the tickets for a trip to Lampedusa.

This is really and simply a wonderful film. I saw it by accident, so it took me by surprise. The film is like other (very good) Italian films in that it features a simple story, wonderful characters, lots of 'couleur locale', and very good actors. And then add some very nice shots and a superb location.

If I was reading this, I would start to fear for a film that gets lost in its niceness and remains too light. But not Respiro (or Lampedusa, after the island it was filmed at). Already in the opening scenes it is made clear that there is a lot of violence and suspense in the air. Not that there is any blood to be seen in this film. There is a lot of fighting between groups of young boys and the adults defend their honor with physical violence, but things never get really mean.

Between the beauty of the island and the harshness of existence on it walks, no, floats, one woman named Grazia. The camera loves her, her sons love her, and even the other islanders love her. But she too different, too non-conforming to be tolerated in the long run.

In an interesting twist, it is not Grazia but her son Pasquale who is the story teller in this film. We see things through his eyes and it is only through him that we get to know his wonderful but mysterious mother. Like the rest of the village, Pasquale is torn between convention and love for her. With him being a 13 (or so) year old in a very traditional family, it is totally believable that we see Pasquale commanding his mother to not swim in the sea in one scene, and adoringly follow her in the next.

And this sums up the film for me: A simple but beautiful story, with an undercurrent of critique or bewilderment at the traditional family style and its low tolerance for being different; a very positive outlook and a love for life, which is shared by all and reflected in the end of the movie; and beautiful and sometimes magical atmosphere which is the most difficult thing ever to create in a movie.

Go see this movie!

PS I you like this movie, consider seeing Blier's "Un, deux, trois, soleil" which is so obscure that I wanted to mention it here.

This movie is a good example of showing that it is possible to produce high quality films without spending too much. The scenario is very well written and characters are well chosen. Every single person fits their role very well that I couldn't help thinking that such a village really exists. Especially Grazia and her younger son are acting very well. The younger son is so natural and has great talent. As for the Grazia, she is showing the character of a caring and sometimes crazy mother with her gestures and talks. The landscape in the film makes you feel like going holiday in the Mediterranean. The sea, sky and the landscape are absolutely beautiful. After seeing this film, I have realized that the rural lives by the sea in many countries are similar, the differences are in the languages, but the feelings are same.

Emanuele Crialese's `Respiro' reminds me of Woody Allen's film, `Hollywood Ending', where a movie director makes a movie so bad, only the French would love it. While Allen's film is fictional, the French still gave "Respiro" the Critic's Week Prize at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. I bet Woody had a chuckle over this one.

The basis for the movie, `Respiro', comes from a legend told on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, where a young mother who behaved outside the rules of the small community, was thought to be insane, and thus ostracized by the townspeople. One day, she disappeared, leaving only her clothes on the beach. The community was left feeling guilty for having driven the woman to suicide, but the force of prayers brought her back to life from the sea, where she returned to normal life with her family.

The main problems with `Respiro' the film, are two-fold: first, the mother, played by Valeria Golino (whose film debut was along side Tom Cruise in `Rain Man'), seemed incongruent to the intent of the legend, which intended to portray the woman as simply out of line with social norms. In the film, however, she is actually psychiatrically ill. This critical point changes our perception of the townspeople's attempt to help her – rather than they're seeming conformist and unjust in their attempts to help her, they actually seemed genuine and authentic. This very fact discredits almost the entire point of the film. The only left to keep it together are the character portrayals themselves. But here, the director fails again, but much like the way Allen satirized in his film, `Hollywood Ending': it's a case of the Emperor's New Clothes: none of the main characters have any depth or meaning (aside from one of the mother's young sons), but the director tells you they do, so those who awarded this film the Critic's Week Prize, seemed to see something that just wasn't there.

Other problems with the film make it even less interesting, and by consequence, even more pretentious: The director intended to keep dialog extremely brief, but failed to replace their communication with anything else to portray character, mood, or even a sense of purpose. It seemed to be a series of scenes that were intended to be interpreted as `artful' in their abstraction and symbolism, but the director just assumed the audience would accept it because he told us to.

The closest thing to compare this movie with would be `Il Postino', the Italian film about the romantic postman who writes love poems to a woman to win her love. That film had all of the features that `Respiro' attempted, but Postino had warm and interesting characters, a meaningful and motivated plotline, and didn't mind portraying a cute Italian island for the beautifully romantic place that it is.

In the end, `Respiro' didn't move me at all, but if it's going to win film awards at Cannes, I'll give the credit more to Woody Allen, who seems to have an insight into those who think they know what a good artsy film is all about.

The movie gives us a vivid and ruthless description of the odyssey of a rebel housewife, described with passionate and emotional involvement without giving vent to any sort of conceptualism. This touching story has been inspired by the legend of a mysterious woman who disappeared a long time ago in Lampedusa (an island in the sea of Sicily, the southern point of Europe.). Grazia, the catalyst character of the story, a restless married woman of unusual habits, is considered a nut, an irresponsible person who can't participate fully in the life of society, being forced into total imagination. If it hadn't been for an out-of-date husband, maybe she would have turned her beauty to better account.

Unable to stifle her feelings and to bear the heavy burden of age-old customs, she blows a fuse, ready to abandon home, land and property to flee into the unknown. As the intolerant member of an archaic fishermen community whose behavior leaves much to be desired, not tuned to her same emotional wavelength, not contaminated by the standardization of the modern society, she's quite resolved to preserve every traditional values and social structures, without leaving space for human relationships not predetermined by time-honored customs faithfully handed on from father to son. In this forgotten land where the younger brothers strive to safeguard the reputation of their mothers, the alienated Grazia, (played by a touching and wonderful Valeria Golino), generally considered to be either a very wretched woman or, even worse, a lunatic one, is eager to undertake a journey towards the complete fulfillment of her hopes, yearning for the sight of her deep blue sea, complying with her inner desire for emancipation. In her unremitting efforts to achieve ultimate freedom, the same freedom bestowed by her upon the dogs waiting to be slaughtered, she strives to get over her existential dimension of illness, feeling like a fish out of water, with fear in her eyes, eager to feel the warm embrace of the sea, restored to a sort of primitive amniotic fluid and changing her uneasy feelings into unlimited pleasure.

The movie shows us the epos of a picturesque island where even the children's games reflect the savage nature of the surrounding environment. To be considered at the same time the celebration of a land and of rough people stubbornly bound together by a close friendship without any will to open up new horizons, conforming to precise religious rules (Our Lady's statue brought down the sounding-depth), careful not to mistake the will of sound emancipation for the abolition of every moral scruples. Decided not to be corrupted by vices of more developed social strata.