THEtenderness by Gianni Amelio is a window on today’s worldon family relationships in which unspeakable pains and moments of beauty and truth can coexist. Broadcast tonight on Rai 3 from 21.20 and available in streaming on Raiplay, The film tells the story of a disillusioned man whose meeting with a young couple puts at stakefor better or for worse, a life that seemed now meaningless. In the cast Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Micaela Ramazzotti, Elio Germano e A magnificent protagonist, Renato Carpentieri.
Tendernessthe plot
Lorenzo (Renato Carpentieri) is about to return home after a long hospitalization. He is a long -term lawyer but with a career not always mirrored. Despite having two children, by his choice he almost never sees them. The only one who loves to have next is the grandchildren Francescoto which it often gives little impeccable life lessons. Elena (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), who is the interpreter for the court, has always struggled to accept this forced emotional distance with the father. Saverio (Arturo Muselli) deals with a place with musical entertainment and seems more interested in his money than him. The man lives in a large apartmentfull of books and objects, In an elegant building in a bourgeois neighborhood of the city of Naples.
A few days after his return meet on the landing the opposite Michela (Micaela Ramazzotti), the new neighbor that you are just transferred from northern Italy with her husband Fabio (Elio Germano) and the two children. The young woman was closed outthe. Since the two accommodations were part of a single property are still connected by a single large terrace, whose mutual areas are separated by a gate. Lorenzo He is the only one to have the keys: he welcomes it into the house and He returns it to his home.
The elderly, from the disenchanted and without momentum indole, unexpectedly fonds to the couple. In Michelaso vital, distinct, spoxated for the new situation but with a spontaneous and affectionate nature, Lorenzo silently pours the paternal affection who never even revealed to his daughter. A dramatic and painful fact interrupts their linkfor man, ancient pains and reflections of a distant past return.
Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Renato Carpentieri in “The tenderness” (photo Claudio Iannone/01Distribution)
Tenderness, The review and meaning of the film
The best expression to describe Tenderness is hidden in the title of novel by Lorenzo Marone of 2015 to which it is inspired: The temptation to be happy. A declaration of intent that the protagonist of the story, a magnificent Renato Carpentieri, only grasps in the late age, crushed by the weight and the distorted consequences of a certain inclination to anaphity.
While The film is based on a novelthis difficult and difficult work He keeps Gianni Amelio’s cinematographic poetics intact. With the pages of paper he has in common the protagonist’s character momentum and his way of life. The director adds a more painful and cynical look at him than existence.
Each personality of the film meets obstacles that make physically and visually A tiring real contact with the other. From the walls of Naples, a city unrecognizable to the abstraction at the closed gate of the terrace, which places a distance between Lorenzo and the sudden affection of the bright and distinct Michela.
The meaning of the film revolves around the ambivalent role that everyone has, between the desire to emancipate or crystallize in it. Being a son, father, a love, an anchor of salvation is a condition with which to continually deal. The solution for Lorenzo seems to be in the encounter with the outside of himself. In the awakening of life, although imperfect, within the family that lives next to him, not that of origin.
In the deck of cards with which Amelio plays his making cinema very well there is also what concerns paternity. A condition often passed off by natural, idyllic and full of furious love, instead described as a synecdoche. In Tendernessthe parental role is interrupted not due to the absence of feeling but for its excess. Failing to take charge of the suffering of the children, it is made of subtraction e Every feeling turns off.
An excellent cast and the cameo of Greta Scacchi
Also with Michela, Lorenzo paradoxically repeats the same operation. Captures the hidden drama of Fabio, who feels a bit like his own But it does not intervene, they don’t change their and its history. The viewer feels all the weight of painof a state that is missing every fragment of optimism, even in its ending. A father and daughter sitting in silence, next to each other, who develop a reconciliation with themselves and their trauma but in which to believe is really difficult.
The director, in addition to an excellent subject, beautifully chooses the cast. In addition to an incredible Renato Carpentieri, loved by directors like Nanni Moretti (The Sol of the future) and Mario Martone (The fabulous young) whose interpretation is worth the whole film, It gives a lot of space to two female interpreters. Giovanna Mezzogiorno gives Elena a sore soul It is careful of the shades of words, perfect counterpart of a father on the margins of the world.
The actress, daughter of Vittorio Mezzogiorno, He was the young protagonist of a prolific season of Italian cinema of the first decade of the 2000s, interpreting highly successful roles in The last kiss (Gabriele Muccino) or The front window by Ferzan Özpetek. In 2023 it went out of directing with a UNFITTING, short film with very personal history. Micaela Ramazzotti, just seen in the cinema in the comedy 30 nights with my ex next to Edoardo Leo, He builds the role of Michela by enhancing his flared impetuosity It is an uncommon emotional charge.
The surprise is the short but incisive presence of Greta Scacchi in the part of Fabio’s mother. Australian Italian actress of great talent, has become one international star thanks to films like Heat and dust by James Ivory and the choral masterpiece of Robert Altman, The protagonists.
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