L’IMMENSITÀ
Starring
Penélope Cruz
Clara (Penélope Cruz) and her emotionally
distant husband Felice (Vincenzo Amato) relocate to Rome to raise a
family. Even though the paint is fresh, and the appliances are new, the
crushing expectations around marriage, desire, and gender in the early 1970s
remain as traditional as ever. Their children Andrew (played by newcomer
Luana Giuliani), Gino, and Diana are likewise poised at a
precipice, on the verge of adolescence, with nothing but their imaginations
to defuse family tensions. The eldest child, Andrew (nicknamed Adri by his
parents), yearns for another life – an outsized, vibrantly-realized vision of a
world where he gets to live as the boy he knows himself to be. Without an
accepted vocabulary for talking about his transgender identity, Andrew tells
adults that he’s an alien from another galaxy and makes a habit of running
away to pursue a local Roma girl who accepts his boyhood at face value. As an
outsider ostracized for her own eccentricities, Clara instinctively strives to
protect her son despite not fully understanding him. An effortlessly moving
film about growing up, fitting in, and breaking the mold, L’immensita is
as freewheeling and creative as its central characters, mixing genres and
staging musical numbers out of thin air. (Italy & France, 2022, 99
mins, NR, Italian with English Subtitles, Dir. Emanuele Crialese)
