Ddirected by Roberto Andò – and based on his novel of the same name – tonight at 9.20pm on Rai 3 airs on first TV The hidden child. Movies with Silvio Orlando in the role of a lonely music professor who welcomes a runaway child into his home, son of a dangerous Camorra.
The hidden childthe plot of the movie
Habitual, with few friends and a conflicting relationship with his father, professor Gabriele Santoro (Silvio Orlando) lives alone in an ancient building in Naples and teaches piano at the S. Pietro a Majella Conservatory.
One day, during the delivery of a package to his apartment, thanks to the door absentmindedly left open, he sneaks into the Santoro house. a little boy (Giuseppe Pirozzi). Gabriele only notices his presence late in the evening and recognizes it: it’s about Ciro, the 10-year-old son of the neighbor, the Camorra Diego (Lino Musella).
Despite not knowing the reason for this escape from his home – Ciro refuses to explain it to him – and aware of the danger he may run, the professor decides to keep him at home. Ready to give him all the affection that the little boy’s family never gave him. And thus rediscovering it a desire for fatherhood that has been denied for too long.
Giuseppe Pirozzi and Silvio Orlando in a scene from “The Hidden Child”. (Photo by Lia Pasqualino)
The touching friendship between a man and a child
Adapting his own novelpublished in 2015 (for those who have read the book: the ending of the film is different), the Sicilian director Roberto Andò returns to investigate the fragilities of the human condition. As he had already done in his other famous films of the past – one among all: Secret journey, with Alessio Boni.
Shot almost entirely indoors in an apartmentsuffering the protagonist from a slight visual “claustrophobia”., The hidden child And a film that tells of two solitudes. That of a professor who has always denied himself the possibilities of affection and that of a child condemned to a life of crime.
Gabriele’s apartment is a free zone and a meeting place for soulsa house which, as Andò explained, «becomes a place of tension and decanting which leads the characters to a new emotional stateas if they were creating the foundations of a new family». Naples, however, with its colors and tensions, remains in the backgroundfiltered through the windows of a house where the two will slowly develop a father/son relationship.
But if the director manages with intelligence and delicacy to develop the psychologies of both protagonists, unfortunately the film suffers from excessively literary writing. Where the dialogues slip into easy rhetoric and a sort of authorial arrogance which, inevitably, It “cools” the warmth and authenticity which should emerge from the two main characters.
The return, after five years, of Silvio Orlando
Absent from the world of cinema for five years (last appearance alongside Fabio Volo in An almost perfect country by Massimo Gaudioso, from 2016), the Neapolitan actor lives with The hidden child the beginning of a more mature second career and less sham.
Silvio Orlando. (Getty Images)
In 2021, the same year as Andò’s film, Orlando also appeared in the excellent Still air by Leonardo Di Costanzo and then acting for Paolo Virzì in Drought and then, extraordinary exploit, it The sun of the future by Nanni Moretti. Where, in addition to playing himself, he is one of the protagonists together with Barbora Bobulova of the “film within the film” set in 1956.
Born and raised in Naples, former flautist and actor with solid theatrical training, Silvio Orlando has been since the 1990s one of the most popular actors in auteur cinema Italian. Versatile, but at the same time measured, the interpreter of The Young Pope, after many films as a classy character actor, he won leading roles starting from the 2000s. When Nanni Moretti chose him as main performer in The caiman in 2006. Two years after the definitive consecration with the Volpi Cup won at the Venice Film Festival thanks to Giovanna’s father by Pupi Avati.
Married since 2008 to the theater actress Maria Laura RondaniniSilvio Orlando will also be in new film by Paolo Sorrentino Parthenopealongside Gary Oldman, and in Another Ferragosto, sequel to Paolo Virzi’s 1996 cult classic August holidays (where Orlando played the unforgettable and petulant husband of Laura Morante).
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