No.OBSTALGIA
Type: moral-anthropological drama
Directed by Mario Martone. With Pierfrancesco Favino, Tommaso Ragno, Francesco Di Leva, Aurora Quattrocchi, Geolier Sofia Essaïdi, Salvatore Striano
Francesco di Leva and Pierfrancesco Favino in a scene from the film (photo by Mario Spada).
The Rione Sanità as a mirror of the soul, in which to find oneself even at the risk of getting lost. Here is the sense of Nostalgia: decided to return to Naples after forty years (he was gone fifteen, then we will understand why) to see his old mother again, Felice Losco is ensnared by memories and the call of his own roots and he finds himself first looking for the reasons for that strange fascination and then feeling forced to deal with it.
Taking a cue from the novel of the same name by Domenico Rea (but abundantly reworked) Martone sets the protagonist’s confrontation with himself in a very recognizable neighborhoodstarting from the faces of the extras, all authentically local, but at the same time stripping him of any folkloristic concession.
Pierfrancesco Favino in a scene from the film (photo by Mario Spada).
The neighborhood thus becomes a place / non-place where in the end the moral value of a confrontation made up of life choices emerges clearly (the activism of the parish priest) and budgets of a whole life.
The secret that Losco carries inside finally comes to the surface, but with him also the weight of a choice that the film tells through the thousand faces of a neighborhood that resembles a labyrinth of sensations, sounds, memories and fears.
And it brings to mind the “attractive and stinging unpleasantness” that already fascinated in Troubling love.
For those who want to discover an unprecedented Naples.
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