The Son's Room (2001)

I read almost all the reviews, before watching the film. I was impressed by the contradictive opinions. Some 1500 users (approx. 10%) rated it from 5 to 1. Personally, I was fascinated by the film. On the other hand I will never blame anyone who disliked it. I just try to understand why someone rejects what I like and that's why I read the "negative" reviews twice, trying (like Giovanni) to analyze reviewers' characters. Certainly this is not a film for Hollywood/Marvel fans. European cinema deals mostly with real people in real life incidents and stories. Therefore they apply to completely different audiences than the above mentioned fans. So, for European mentalities the film is very good, believe me!

Fmovies: It takes a certain amount of cheek to write, direct and star in your own films and Nanni Moretti's earlier work, 'Carao Diaro', was certainly eccentric, as he played himself as an annoying and socially limited loner. In 'The Son's Room', he proves he can act a role, in a more orthodox portrait of a family struggling to come to terms with the death of their son. The portrait of inter-generational relationships seems over-idealised (and how many teenagers are into Brian Eno?), but the real strength of this film is its sense of inicidentality. Instead of playing as straight melodrama, we see the family trying to continue with their lives, and in particular Moretti's character, a psychotherapist, interacting with his patients. The importance attached to the chance juxtaposition of events is reminiscent of Kieslowski, as is some of the dialogue: stylised but profound, even (or even because) its relationship to the main events is oblique: the whole carries meaning precisely because the individual parts are not overloaded, everything is potentially symbolic but nothing is forced. At the end of the day you believe in these characters; as a result, their tragedy rings with truth.

THE SON'S ROOM (2002) ***1/2 (ITALIAN W/SUBTITLES) Nanni Moretti, Laura Morante, Giuseppe Sanfelice, Jasmine Trinca, Sofia Vigliar. Excellently realized depiction of a loving Italian family who find themselves questioning a bleak future when a tragedy strikes shaking them out of their idealized trappings and seeking resolution to unanswered questions. Moretti, one of Italy's finest comedians, does a superb low-key job here in acting, directing and co-writing (with Linda Ferri and Heldrun Schleef) while maintaining an even-keeled balance of emotions, high and low, throughout thanks also to his talented cast. Haunting, humane and ultimately heart-rending yet never condescending and a final note: one of the most naturally performed interpretation of a nuclear family that truly loves one another equally; a damn rare thing to marvel.

The Son's Room fmovies. The family ties in this film are so astoundingly true to life, it almost brings back the tears... I cannot think of a better film dealing with grief than La Stanza del Figlio, I swear on my own life. You could think that there was nothing new to bring to the subject of the movie, and boy would you be very very wrong. Moretti deals with the loss of his son in such an amazingly realistic way, it's almost scary... And the sister, played by Jasmine Trinca, is also an endearing character. You truly and deeply feel what their family feels - the negative reviews on this type of movie are ill-directed because they are NOT the target audience. They unfortunately sneaked in the wrong theater !!

Moretti's best. Period.

Nanni Moretti's deserved winner of the Palme D'Or was a controversial choice, if only because it is a film grounded in reality and truth. We know these characters for a change, they are the neighbours whom we fear approach because of their loss and raw pain.

Moretti, in his subtle yet magnificent performance and in his deft, assured direction, has crafted a film which transcends cliche and sentimentality in spite of its well trodden subject matter. As in his earlier effort, 'Caro Diario' the viewer is held transfixed by his languid cinematic storytelling, which is nonetheless riveting.

Without resorting to pat endings or easy solutions to the characters' individual suffering (beautifully rendered by each of the performers, whose roles portray distinct yet relevant facets of grief) the film manages a redemption in unexpected, yet highly satisfying, fashion. I left the screening at the Toronto International Film Festival feeling completely exhilarated and grateful to this natural filmmaker.

A beautiful portrait of true, real emotion.

`Son's Room' reminds me why I love character-driven European films: the pace is slow, the camera lingers on a face longer than an American shot would dare, and the theme is frighteningly simple but almost always universal. In this case, a loving family has lost a son; the grieving process and the letting go are painful and inevitable. The film makes it all as lyrical as could be possible for a grim topic.

The point of view is consistently the psychiatric-professional dad's, who regrets he had not forced his son to run with him rather than go with his friends that fateful Sunday. Dad's sessions with clients frequently mirror his personal family life, before and after the tragedy, adding a melancholy connection between this flawed evaluator of men and his clients. In a dream he tells one of his clients, `I'm just as boring as you are,' certifying that our analyst and the rest of us are neither above nor below the ties that bind humans. Nanni Moretti writes and directs with Jean Renoir's gifted sense of the romance and tragedy of living everyday.

The exaggerated scenes of happy family life before the tragedy, for instance when they lip-synch to tunes during car trips, serve to highlight the unbearably real grief after. Eventually it takes a young outsider to move the characters to another level of reconciliation. Throughout the film the son's room maintains it role as motif to remind that the son, like us, lives in this space for just a short while.

This plot resolution is best expressed by the lyrics on the radio as the family comes to terms with its grief in the final scene

"Here we are stuck by this river/You and I underneath a sky/That's ever falling down, down, down."

This ending fits well the need to get outside grief to beat it at its corrosive game.

`Son's Room' shows that we will be crushed by that sky if we don't take care. The film deservedly won the top prize last year at the Cannes Film Festival.