PLOT: An 18-year-old boy is forced to grow up and take responsibility when his family faces heartbreak and economic hardship.
The Italian drama Vento Di Terra is so austere and so removed from sentimentality that even the most heartbreaking events keep us at a distance.
Anyone weaned on sentimental Hollywood cinema might find this approach too sad, too full of despair. But, of course, there are many effective ways to communicate human stories and Italian filmmaker Vincenzo Marra has chosen a path of intense realism, formal structure and no emotional mush.
So it is no surprise that this film, literally translated as Wind Of The Earth, is not opening at a multiplex. Instead, it plays today, tomorrow and June 28 at the Cinematheque Ontario in Jackman Hall at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Then it moves to the Carlton Cinemas for a longer run July 1.
The film, populated with many untrained, natural actors from the local area and shot on location in Marra's own original neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples, tells the story of one family's difficulties with life.
The father (Edoardo Melone), a skilled factory worker, is now forced into unemployment. The mother (Vincenza Modica) labours over a sewing machine to put scraps of food on the table. The daughter (Giovanna Ribera) searches in vain for a job. The son (the impressive Vincenzo Pacilli, who brings a subtle yet jarring truthfulness to his central performance) feels trapped.
Slowly, after facing a family tragedy, the son is forced to take greater responsibility and truly become a man -- not in any kind of false heroic way but simply by seeing his family dynamic through fresh eyes, however painful the process.
He is no mope, no lazy adolescent. But his education in life is awkward and difficult, too, especially when he joins the military -- anything for a salary -- and ends up serving with the United Nations force in Kosovo.
Nothing in the movie is shown in a grandiose manner. Quite the opposite. The Kosovo operation is shown as the time-wasting, confusing, mentally-draining experience it must be for many of the participants who don't have a clue about the big picture and what they are doing in a war zone.
On the homefront, our hapless hero faces more savage truths about life in his twenties than most people deal with in a lifetime. Yet filmmaker Marra never asks us to feel sorry for the fellow, or for his family. Instead, the film, part of the realism tradition in Italian cinema, shows things as they are for people like this. Not a pretty picture but a worthy one.
(This film is rated PG)
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