Antonella Baccaro (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
D.where did we stay? We were talking about Three floorsthe beautiful novel by Eshkol Nevobrought to the attention of the general public by the film version of Nanni Moretti.
Three stories linked by the same environment in which they take place: a bourgeois apartment building in Tel Aviv. But above all from a common thread that the author reveals through one of the protagonists, only at the end.
And that, beware, I’ll spoil you here to be able to talk about it: there is a distance between us and other people that is physiological and a distance that becomes detachment, and makes us lose sight of reality.
The author explains it thus: “The three planes of the soul do not exist within us (a reference to the Freudian ego, superego and id, ed). Not at all. They exist in the space between us and the other, in the distance between our mouth and the ear of those who listen to our story. And if there is no one to listen, then there is no story either. […] The important thing is to talk to someone. Otherwise, all alone, we don’t even know what floor we are on ».
The story that best represents this thought is that of Hani, a young housewife who looks after two small children in the absence of her husband, always on the road for work.
“Three floors” by Eshkol Nevo (Neri Pozza).
Hani’s fear, enclosed within the four walls of her home, is that of no longer being able to distinguish real events from imaginary ones and of going crazy, as happened to her mother..
It is the story that many women would like to tell. But many don’t make it, and succumb to trying to play the role of the perfect, loving mom. Unfortunately, the pages of crime news are full of their stories, those that tell of crazy and desperate gestures and of “degenerate” mothers.
Loneliness, the difficulty of admitting the difficulty, the inability to ask for help are a trap into which it is easy to fall. The pandemic did not help: many women have lost their jobs, or do it at home, thus losing their saving contact with reality.
In the latest budget law, an article was skipped that financed a bonus to facilitate access to mental health care. Sometimes in the attic of politics the background noise of our stories does not arrive. And that’s how reality is lost sight of.
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