Film Review: LA VITA ACCANTO: Marco Tullio Giordana’s Film Touches the Heart but Takes Shortcuts to Get to Its Final Destination [Locarno 2024]
La vita accanto Review
La vita accanto / The Life Apart (2024) Film Review from the 77th Annual Locarno Film Festival, a movie directed by Marco Tullio Giordana, written by Marco Bellocchio, Gloria Malatesta and Marco Tullio Giordana and starring Sara Ciocca, Beatrice Barison, Valentina Bellè, Sonia Bergamasco, Paolo Pierobon, Luigi Diberti, Michela Cescon and Alessandro Bressanello.
La vita accanto is the ambitious new film from director Marco Tullio Giordana. It’s a handsomely made production chock full of solid acting and tremendous heart. However, there are some big jumps it takes during the two decades it spans and sometimes, the viewer may want to keep holding on to parts of the story that the film chooses to let go of fairly quickly. If you blink, you could miss certain key plot developments but, at the same time, the film is easy to follow and is certainly heartfelt. It’s the story of a baby girl, Rebecca, who was born in 1980 with a reddish blemish across one side of her face. Her mom, Maria (the perfect Valentina Bellè), overreacts and the movie takes tragic turns as it sheds light on the way the older Rebecca handles her flaw and how it is perceived by those surrounding her.
Rebecca (the superb Sara Ciocca) becomes fascinated by playing the piano as it is introduced to her early on in her life. Her aunt, Erminia (Sonia Bergmasco), inspires her but Rebecca’s facial flaw is magnified greatly by Maria who thinks that her daughter should be hidden away from the world. Rebecca meets a red-haired female friend named Lucilla who becomes her very close companion through the early stages of her life and beyond.
Paolo Pierobon is excellent as Rebecca’s successful and hard-working dad, Osvaldo. This role of the father is pivotal to understanding the actions Maria takes during the course of the movie. There is a secret unveiled which helps shed light on why Maria calls a key woman in the film a monster but that surprise is a relatively small fraction of the picture in the grand scheme of things. Pierobon is asked to perform some difficult scenes such as a confrontation with Rebecca later in the movie and the actor does a fine job as Osvaldo throughout the picture, adding a significant amount of depth to his role.
Maria is expertly played by Bellè who takes fear and insecurities to new levels through the performance of this particular role. A mother’s love for her daughter is unconditional and Maria wants the best for Rebecca. She doesn’t want to see Rebecca be ridiculed for her outward flaw. The plot takes a sharp turn and Maria disappears from the action as Rebecca grows up and is soon played by the terrific Beatrice Barison.
The scenes where Rebecca attends school are conventional but there’s nothing wrong with them. However, the film works best when it focuses on Rebecca’s passionate love for music. Of course, there are many distractions for the struggling artist. One of them comes when Lucilla’s family gets entangled in a situation where one of her parents gets pushed out a window. Such scenes develop the plot but feel overly dramatic at times.
This film takes a supernatural turn of sorts when a ghost appears and a situation is resolved a bit too easily. That’s because this is a movie with high aspirations to be both inspirational and highly emotional. You will certainly be involved in the characters’ lives thanks to the hugely detailed plot but the movie takes short cuts to get to an ending where everything seems better than it should be given the circumstances that arise throughout the film. Rebecca’s dad’s possible dishonorable quality is quickly glanced over as if the movie is trying to touch on too many different topics and it doesn’t deal in-depth with all of them as some viewers may wish it did.
That being said, the acting is first-rate. Barison commands the audience’s respect as her character enters a conservatory and meets people her own age of less than trustworthy status. Pierobon and Bergamasco flourish in performances that are both sophisticated and relevant. This is Valentina Bellè’s movie from the word “go” whether the actress gets to appear in every minute of the film or not. In fact, the character she plays, Maria, resurfaces towards the end for one of the most intriguing mother-daughter conversations that I’ve seen in a film, especially given the context of these exchanges in terms of how they complement the story line. Bellè is raw and authentic and the film is all the better as a result.
La vita accanto is conventional at times and wildly unique at others. The musical aspects of it can be inspirational while the premise of living with an outward scar is certainly thought-provoking. It’s impossible not to sympathize with Rebecca and those surrounding her. Despite its flaws, this is a moving motion picture that will make audiences thankful for what they have and ambitious to pursue the things they want in life regardless of the obstacles in their way.
Rating: 7/10
Leave your thoughts on this La vita accanto review and the film below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons. Readers seeking more Locarno Film Festival news can visit our Locarno Film Festival Page, our Film Festival Page, and our Film Festival Facebook Page.
Readers seeking more film reviews can visit our Movie Review Page, our Movie Review Twitter Page, and our Movie Review Facebook Page.
Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Mobile App, Google News, Feedly, Twitter, Faceboo
Related Articles
