Affecting drama about a comfortable -- perhaps TOO comfortable -- Italian family who must deal with the sudden and unexpected loss of one of their own. *The Son's Room* is directed and written by Nanni Moretti; he also stars in the lead role of the psychiatrist patriarch. After watching the movie, I Googled a bit about Moretti and learned that the Italians consider him to be their version of Woody Allen. This reputation must rest on an earlier satirical body of work, because I found little of Allen's influence here. (In fact, the way this film critiques psychiatrists and analysis in general, Moretti may very well be the UN-Woody Allen.) I guess I'll have to take their word for it, as only two of his films have actually received distribution here in the States. If *The Son's Room* is any guide, we're missing out on a lot.
It's not that the film shows us something "new"; in fact, the case is rather the reverse. American viewers who remember Redford's *Ordinary People* may accuse Moretti of plagiarism, but he can hardly be accused of plagiarizing the hysteria, the hammy overacting, and the evidently sincere belief in the utility of psychoanalysis that constitute the primary elements of that earlier American film. In this movie, there is no hack writer's fantasy about uptight well-to-do WASPs "denying" their grief, or hiding it from their country club friends. *The Son's Room* is a day-to-day chronicle of how a family deals with the grinding course of grief, and, as such, strikes me as an unusual undertaking. Why? Because there are no gimmicks here; no deep, dark secrets; no "ethnic" shrink (one of the Hack Writer's favorite stereotypes) to instruct the family on how to be emotional. Heck, the hero of the film IS a shrink (and they're all Italians!), but these facts don't mitigate the agonizing loss of a child. Indeed, the family suffers the usual episodes of derangement: Moretti breaks things in the kitchen and lashes out at his patients; his wife is inconsolable and banishes her husband from the bed; their daughter gets in fights on the basketball court. Nope, nothing "new" . . . and perhaps this is why *The Son's Room* won the Palme d'Or in 2001. It ain't new, but it's Real.
Even better, the movie is not wholly a slog through depression. The mood is lightened by the scenes in the analyst's office, in which Moretti listens to a parade of neurotics nattering away about their largely non-existent problems: we get the sex-addict; the hypochondriac; the obsessive-compulsive, etc. Obviously one of the film's main functions is to expose the psychoanalysis racket. Even before Moretti's son dies, he never seems inspired by his work, never seems to actually help his patients, and barely contains his boredom. The movie goes out of its way to demonstrate that when issues of real consequence occur, psychiatry offers no anodynes. When one of his patients gets cancer, Moretti -- in a real, unguarded moment after his son has already died -- bitterly suggests that mental attitude has nothing to with the chances for survival. And, of course, Moretti himself finds no professionally applied salve for his pain . . . such amelioration can only come from time, and from his family. Psychiatry is obviously useless in these cases; it works much better when you don't have any real problems.
I want to finish by saluting the fine, naturalistic performances by Moretti, the lovely Laura Morante as his wife, Jasmine Trinca as the teenage daughter, and Giuseppe Sanfelice -- appropriately close-lipped and mysterious, with just the right amount of a 16-year-old's childish mischievousness -- as the son Andrea. I also appreciated the top-notch transitions that Moretti gets from his editor: the scenes tend to end abruptly, jarring us out of a prolonged involvement with the characters and situations, like rude interruptions. This is a fitting editorial style for a film that concerns itself with an ultimate rude "interruption".
9 stars out of 10.
It's not that the film shows us something "new"; in fact, the case is rather the reverse. American viewers who remember Redford's *Ordinary People* may accuse Moretti of plagiarism, but he can hardly be accused of plagiarizing the hysteria, the hammy overacting, and the evidently sincere belief in the utility of psychoanalysis that constitute the primary elements of that earlier American film. In this movie, there is no hack writer's fantasy about uptight well-to-do WASPs "denying" their grief, or hiding it from their country club friends. *The Son's Room* is a day-to-day chronicle of how a family deals with the grinding course of grief, and, as such, strikes me as an unusual undertaking. Why? Because there are no gimmicks here; no deep, dark secrets; no "ethnic" shrink (one of the Hack Writer's favorite stereotypes) to instruct the family on how to be emotional. Heck, the hero of the film IS a shrink (and they're all Italians!), but these facts don't mitigate the agonizing loss of a child. Indeed, the family suffers the usual episodes of derangement: Moretti breaks things in the kitchen and lashes out at his patients; his wife is inconsolable and banishes her husband from the bed; their daughter gets in fights on the basketball court. Nope, nothing "new" . . . and perhaps this is why *The Son's Room* won the Palme d'Or in 2001. It ain't new, but it's Real.
Even better, the movie is not wholly a slog through depression. The mood is lightened by the scenes in the analyst's office, in which Moretti listens to a parade of neurotics nattering away about their largely non-existent problems: we get the sex-addict; the hypochondriac; the obsessive-compulsive, etc. Obviously one of the film's main functions is to expose the psychoanalysis racket. Even before Moretti's son dies, he never seems inspired by his work, never seems to actually help his patients, and barely contains his boredom. The movie goes out of its way to demonstrate that when issues of real consequence occur, psychiatry offers no anodynes. When one of his patients gets cancer, Moretti -- in a real, unguarded moment after his son has already died -- bitterly suggests that mental attitude has nothing to with the chances for survival. And, of course, Moretti himself finds no professionally applied salve for his pain . . . such amelioration can only come from time, and from his family. Psychiatry is obviously useless in these cases; it works much better when you don't have any real problems.
I want to finish by saluting the fine, naturalistic performances by Moretti, the lovely Laura Morante as his wife, Jasmine Trinca as the teenage daughter, and Giuseppe Sanfelice -- appropriately close-lipped and mysterious, with just the right amount of a 16-year-old's childish mischievousness -- as the son Andrea. I also appreciated the top-notch transitions that Moretti gets from his editor: the scenes tend to end abruptly, jarring us out of a prolonged involvement with the characters and situations, like rude interruptions. This is a fitting editorial style for a film that concerns itself with an ultimate rude "interruption".
9 stars out of 10.