“L’Immensità” is director Emmanuel Criales’ first feature film in 11 years, and his fifth in a quarter of a century: the talented Italian, known to international audiences for his fascinating and entertaining sequel about immigrants from Ellis Island’s “Golden Door”, has never been one for projects other than Personal or thoughtless. At first glance, then, one might wonder what brought him out of hibernation for a movie that, with its choppy running time and little local narrative, belies the title that translates as “enormity.” Set in the 1970s, this tale of a 12-year-old navigates his sexual identity while his mother battles mental health demons, is so vividly and heartily painful that it can’t be described as slight, yet sensitive and curious in ways that feel vulnerable — sometimes Torn and drenched by an elaborate array, or massive star magnetism that is arguably a secondary leader, one Penelope Cruz.
What gives the film its weight, in fact, falls under the category of outsider knowledge: that for Karialis is a distorted memoir of sorts, filtering his own teenage experience through the prism of a biologically born female child, and yearning to be someone else. How inconspicuous or abstract little Andrea (played by captivating newcomer Luana Giuliani) seems for the filmmaker to answer, but “L’Immensità” benefits from a tender and honest investment in the child’s plight. The film never treats transgender identity as a hot issue or film platform for messages, but as a private personal conviction in a life already full of complications, and is more concerned with how Andrea perceives and accepts his gender than it is with how he is outside. The world is resisting it.
However, while the struggle for trans rights continues to feature in the headlines and political discussion rooms, this sensitivity is nonetheless considered subjectivity – an asset that, along with Cruz’s irresistible presence, should garner a strong distributor interest for this film. The humble, both within and beyond the LGBTQ segment. ‘L’Immensità’ is sure to top with star-studded glamor, presented in the lusciously lit close-up, where her character Clara applies pearl earrings and sparkling layers of smoky eye makeup to a still-pink, tear-drenched face. If through the lens of Pedro Almodóvar Cruz truly establishes herself as her generation’s replacement for Sophia Loren, Coriales takes the likeness a step further, cultivating the Spaniard in Loren’s hometown of Rome, as kind of a beautifully injured housewife as the housewife. An Italian icon who has perfected in the films of the youth of Crealis.
“You only wear makeup if you’re going out or crying,” says Andrea—a name he names himself as insistently as his family sticks to his female birth name Adriana, much to his constant consternation. More than his two younger brothers, he sees the psychological, physical and sometimes sexual abuse that Clara is subjected to at the hands of his loveless father Felice (Vincenzo Amato); Andrea sometimes gets his share of it, too. The family recently moved to a spacious apartment on the outskirts of town, but the marriage remains a dead and empty burden on the couple. Clara begs Phyllis to leave her, but Catholic decency keeps them trapped together, until dictates otherwise.
Over the course of a long, lazy summer, Andrea searches for an escape he can through the undeveloped expanse of reed opposite the apartment building. On the other side is a camp site for socially mischievous travelers, where he befriends a young girl, Sarah (Penelope Nieto Conte) who accepts him for what he is – the only person in his life who does. Clara bans these play dates, clearly fearing the consequences of Andrea’s secret showing up to hostile strangers. She laughs at Andrea’s supposed identity the most, but still lacks the insight or understanding to treat it as more than just a phase or aberration, a figment of the fiery imagination of a child she defends as much as other relatives.
Despite this predicament, Andrea and Clara are allies in an extended family that both consider strangers – the latter due to her Spanish ancestry, his ups and downs, and reckless behavior that portend an imminent nervous breakdown. Crialese underscores this bond by literally highlighting it in the film’s scattered fantasy musical sequences, feverishly dreaming of the diverse shows the family watch together on their black and white TV. Gentle choreography and filming in a shimmering monochrome, they position Andrea as a man’s duo – sometimes in rockabilly skin, sometimes in a soft black tie – modeled after Clara’s siren-like chants, mimicking Italian pop standards including the stunning translation of Francis’ song. Lay “love” story.
Despite the intricate Freudian intricacy of these flashy distractions, they are less resonant and revealing than the pivotal, more mundane scenes in this spin-off: at family gatherings, coastal vacations, church communion, and Christmas dinners, individual crises come to the fore amid crowds’ struggles. Andrea never seems more alone than surrounded by his kin on all sides: “I come from another galaxy,” he began to claim, and “L’Immensità” comes close to his words. Giuliani, in a fierce performance attentive to the character’s intense self-awareness and the physical discomfort of his body and everything around him, surely has an otherworldly quality that lives up to Cruz’s brilliance in their joint scenes, even if the movie itself seems occasionally. Disproportionately boxed with the latter. “Can you stop being so beautiful?” Andrea angrily pleads with his mother at some point: The unspoken answer is a resounding no.
However, perhaps the cult star-studded cult character in a movie often owes much to the glamorous diversions that were available to frustrated spirits in Italy in the 1970s. Visually, the film has an eclectic memory quality that is bright and elevated, passed through the buttery lighting of DP Gergely Pohárnok’s crowded but meticulously organized installations, and the refreshingly iridescent splendor of Massimo Cantini Parrini’s costumes. Everything in ‘L’Immensità’ is beautiful even when it’s not all: strange to Crialese, affecting the layers of a piece of memory in the world as it were, and can be in the same gilded setting.
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