Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Emanuele Crialese
Starring: Penélope Cruz, Luana Giuliani, Vincenzo Amato
Perhaps the most welcome feature of Twitter's timely demise is the
decreased space for anti-trans hatred, which the hyperbolic nature of the
insular platform not only propagates but also incubated. Opening X (ha!)
at any point over the last six months meant confrontation with agitated,
faux-impassioned anti-trans drivel, which, even from a limited real-life
experience, was clearly uninformed and rooted in fear and loathing. I am
loosely acquainted with trans people (disclaimer no.1 - I am a cis male
who is comfortable both in his body and sexuality; I realise that for
other people this is not the case, and I do not hate them for it and do
not understand why anyone else could), and I can promise you that they are
simply uninterested in snooping in bathrooms or in Your Kids (nb, no one
is really interested in Your Kids: we are all just being polite because
Your Kids are Fucking Boring). The trans people I've met don't care about
competitive sports, either. As a circumscribed platform which is
predicated upon simplified and sensationalist conjecture, Twitter has
inflated transsexuality into an abstract, an imaginary threat for people
who like to have an enemy which they feel confident are weaker than them.
It is impossible to engage with these scapegoating pricks because they're
in thrall to the exponential phenomena, not the real-life human beings
directly involved (it's easier to scoff at fictional kids-identify-as-cats
nonsense and get het up about the untruth that six-year-olds are
undergoing surgery than actually engage with concrete socio-political
scenarios that require a modicum of understanding beyond what is severed
in deliciously tantalising hate-bites, after all). Here is hoping that the
dopamine thrill of the pile-on, and the satisfyingly self-righteous spite
it encourages, will diminish with the platform. It all seems so... old
fashioned.
It is interesting, then, that Emanuele Crialese's (writing shared
with Francesca Manieri and Vittorio Moroni)
L'immensità, which centres on the gender dysmorphia of a young boy born a girl, is a
period piece set in late '70s Rome. Trans-people have existed for yonks
(it is not a "new thing") and by representing the issue within a
recent-enough past, away from the artifice and inflation of the social
media discourse, L'immensità attempts to engender a fresh
depiction which is rooted in individual experience. Adri (Luana Giuliani) is a teen uncomfortable in their body and the expectations society has
of their birth gender. They are the oldest of three, with a father, Felice
(Vincenzo Amato), who is conservative and absent; fortune has,
however, favoured Adri with a mum, Clara, who is funny, intelligent and
stylish and played by God Pénelope Cruz (disclaimer no.2 - my
favourite actor). What a role model! Problem is, Clara has demons of her
own, with an undiagnosed depressive nature...
Like the deliberate setting of Romeo and Juliet's Verona (it is accepted
that Shakespeare never left England) locating this colourful
character-drama in a masculinist, heteronormative Italy is instructive.
Within this oppressive patriarchy there is only space for a certain type
of male persona, and so we see Clara and Adri wolf whistled and harassed
in the street by a couple of emboldened no-marks, along with the domestic
assumption that Clara will house-make and accept Felice's indiscretions
and whims. In a sequence which characterises the film's narrative cross
over of Clara and Adri, and how this dynamic examines gender roles, we see
Adri, in subjectively low-angle frame, crawl under his parent's bed -
impelled by an instinctive need to protect, or curiosity? - and freak out
at Felice's attempted sexual assault of his wife: Clara is a victim of
gender hegemony, while Adri is nonplussed by its hallmarks of violence and
dominance. "Hiding" is a symbolic motif which is continued throughout the
film, with Adri sneaking into enclosed spaces at various points, most
spectacularly when he and his kinspeople (including cousins) get stuck in
a drainage system...
Leaning into the Mediterranean stereotype, said episode takes place during
an en masse family gathering (another milieu with heightened expectations
of teens), and, when the panicked kids are rescued, the parents go ape and
start smacking their offspring with angered relief. But not Clara. This
free spirit instead sprays everyone with a garden hose to chill them out.
Like her son, Clara is at odds with the conservatism of her surroundings,
and not only joins the kids in the various hide and seek games, but also
makes grand play of other situations, as if in refusal of her subjected
status quo. At times, L'immensità is a musical, with
fantasised sequences featuring gorgeous period pop functioning as
sublimated escapism for our mother/son duo. We see Clara marshal the kids
into domestic chores choreographed to the joyous stomp of Raffaella
Carrà's 'Rumore' and during the film's stand out sequence witness Adri
lip-synching to 'Prisencolinensinainciusol', with the rest of the cast and
extras dancing in perfect pastiche of the era's European music videos. If
the image of a monochrome, swaying Penélope Cruz in a platinum wig miming
the female sequences of the song doesn't charge you with joy then you have
no heart/are straight.
These deeply cinematic confections are the draw for
L'immensità, which is otherwise a straightforward bildungsroman delineated within
the repressive confines of melodrama. The film presents interesting ideas,
such as the conflation of transubstantiation with transsexuality: if wheat
flour and water can be identified as flesh and blood, the film proposes,
then what's the issue with a person identifying as a particular gender?
But such excursions, just like the sweet subplot of Adri's burgeoning
relationship with a "gypsy girl" (Sara - Penélope Nieto Conti), are
ultimately left unexplored due to the film's overriding concerns, which is
the glorious depiction of its star and her mesmerising energy. In the
opening sequence of L'immensità, Adri and Clara are linked in a two shot that flicks from a medium frame
of the boy to an extreme close up of his mother's eyes (thick with
mascara, of course), slightly tilting to the mocha freckles of her nose, a
cigarette held by scarlet painted hands, blush lips. Cut to the pearl of
an earring, the eyes again in a gentle cant lingering in and out of focus:
Adri, and L'immensità (and, yes alright, we) are infatuated
by Cruz, with the film luminously bending around her like a glow, and
playing to her strengths: urgent emotional communication, stoic
repression, and looking incredible.
L'immensità is on UK/ROI VOD now.
