|
RESPIRO
7/10
aka Grazia’s Island : Italy (Ita/Fr) 2002 : Emanuele CRIALESE : 95
mins
An enigmatic, original, occasionally transcendent family drama set on the starkly
beautiful Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, Respiro offers some
powerful glimpses into a community at one remove from the rest of modern
Italian society. These glimpses are sufficiently striking to compensate
for the more familiar element at its core – the story of how the island’s
no-nonsense ways are thrown into turmoil by the mental instability of
one resident, fortyish beauty Grazia (Valeria Golino).
Mother of three children – late-teen Marinella (Veronica d’Agostino), 13-year-old
Pasquale (Francesco Casisa) and hyperactive brat Filippo (Filippo Pucillo)
– and married to taciturn fisherman Pietro (Vincenzo Amato), Grazia works
part-time as a fish-packer (all the island’s adults seem to be employed
in fish-related industries) but spends most of her days zooming around
on her scooter or swimming semi-naked in the glorious blue-green waters
that surround the island. Always noted for her mood-swings – “When she’s
happy, she’s too happy, and when she’s sad, she’s too sad” someone remarks
– Grazia’s increasingly volatile behaviour convinces her relatives she
should be sent for treatment in distant, chilly Milan. But Grazia isn’t
so easily ordered around, and takes drastic steps to avoid leaving her
beloved island.
As played by Golino in a mannered performance, Grazia soon establishes herself
as a standard-issue movie mad-woman – complete with kitchen freak-out
in which she suddenly starts smashing up the crockery. (The pivotal moment
when she goes that crucial step too far, meanwhile, finally answers the
Baha Boys’ immortal question “Who let the dogs out?!”). And her relationship
with her old-fashioned fellow Lampedusans is slightly confusing – she’s
shunned as a crazy one minute then, when the villagers mistakenly believe
her dead, she’s rapidly elevated to something approaching sainthood.
What’s much more interesting is Grazia’s domestic relationships, especially
the children: each of them react differently to their mother’s wayward
behaviour, with Pasquale the most complicit in her attempts to avoid exile
to Milan. The most effective scenes, in fact, are those in which Grazia
isn’t present at all, such as when we see Pasquale and Filippo participate
in the violent, neverending horseplay that defines life for Lampedusa’s
youngsters, or the well-observed sequences in which Marinella coyly drifts
into a relationship with a slightly older (but much less streetwise) cop
from the mainland, Pier Luigi (Elio Germano).
Respiro, while occasionally a little too torpid for its own good as a drama, is nevertheless
very effective as intense mood-piece, thanks in part to the restrained
score by John Surman, while Fabio Zamarion’s camera manages to make Lampedusa
exotic and alluring but never too picture-postcard pretty. His underwater
shots are particularly impressive – building up to a final dream-like
sequence which, though perhaps a touch too enigmatic for some audiences,
ends Respiro on exactly the right note. Crialese – and editor Didier
Ranz – deserve credit for holding their nerve at this crucial point: so
many film-makers these days simply don’t know when and how to say ‘cut’.
2nd September, 2003
(seen 1st September : Tyneside
Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne)
by Neil
Young
-
|
