Review of the film “A Better Life” by Francesca Archibugi

Francesca Archibugi’s drama “A Better Life” (Il colibri), an adaptation of the novel by the popular Italian writer Sandro Veronesi, has been released. Based on viewing results Yulia Shagelman The only thing that can be said about the life of the protagonist is that it turned out to be long.

In the original, the film, like the novel on which it is based, is called “Hummingbird” – this is the nickname Marco Carrere (Pierfrancesco Favino) was given as a child by his mother (Laura Morante), since he was born the smallest of her three children and even at the age of fourteen looked like ten. Another, less obvious metaphor is shouted in the face of the now adult Marco by his wife Marina (Kasya Smutnyak) in the heat of a quarrel: a hummingbird in flight flaps its wings so quickly that it freezes in place – and so does our hero, in the opinion of his upset and, as we know By that moment, his wife, who was not completely mentally healthy, had frozen forever at one point, allowing the lives of his own and those of his loved ones to rush past without affecting him in any way.

The spectators find themselves in the same position of passive observers, before whose eyes Marco’s story unfolds over the course of two short hours, in which there will be meetings and partings, losses and gains, births and deaths, amazing coincidences and inexplicable accidents, marvelous Italian landscapes, panoramas with balconies of luxurious Florentine apartments and views from the windows of Parisian hotels. There will not be a single argument in favor of the fact that this particular story should be of interest to us.

To disguise this unfortunate fact, Francesca Archibugi and the two co-writers who helped her adapt the novel for the screen abandon the linear narrative and constantly jump from one decade to another – from the early 1980s to the present day. A phone call can serve as a trigger that sends you to the past or future, and when opening the door from the room to the kitchen, the characters suddenly find themselves in their own youth. But all these time travels invariably lead to the same family villa on the Tyrrhenian Sea, where young Marco (Francesco Centorame, strikingly similar to the young version of Favino) once fell in love with the neighbors’ daughter Louise (Elisa Fossati in her youth, Berenice Bejo in her youth). adulthood).

Despite the fact that Marco and Louise’s parents are not very friendly to each other, the young people’s jokes about Montagues and Capulets are, of course, exaggerated. But that same summer, when they secretly go on dates so as not to annoy anyone, a real tragedy happens: Marco’s sister Irene (Fotini Peluso) commits suicide. In order not to remain in a place darkened by death, the neighbors hastily leave, and this is how Marco loses Louise for the first time. Immediately after this, another fateful event occurs: together with his friend Duccio (Lorenzo Mellini), nicknamed the Trouble-Bearer for his ability to bring misfortune, in which their entire company believes, he is going, again secretly from his parents, to fly to Ljubljana to play in a casino. But Duccio is seized with a terrible premonition, his friends get off the plane, and it gets into a plane crash in which all the remaining passengers die.

The motives of predestination and attempts to avoid it, gambling with fate, as well as the eternal search for lost love leave their mark on Marco’s entire future life. He even meets his future wife, having accidentally seen her on a TV show dedicated to that very plane crash: she, a flight attendant, was supposed to work on that ill-fated flight, but exchanged jobs with a friend. Marco sees this as a sign that he and Marina are connected by providence, but a marriage built on such a shaky foundation also turns out to be quite catastrophic. Which is not surprising, since all this time his true love remains Louise, whom he finds and regularly meets with, although for some strange vow that is not explained in the film, he does not have sex. However, the complete lack of chemistry between Favino and both actresses makes it difficult to believe that there are any feelings in this triangle.

His unemotional style of acting does not allow one to penetrate into Marco’s inner life, and the other characters did not have this life at all: Marina is a hysterical woman with a “Balkan temperament”, Louise is a woman of mystery; parents, sister, brother (Alessandro Tedeschi), daughter (Benedetta Porcarolli), granddaughter – nothing more than milestones in the biography of the main character. There is also a psychologist played by Nanni Moretti, who appears in the film only to violate professional ethics, give several long explanations of what is happening to Marco at one point or another, and spout a moral. It seems to boil down to the fact that in any difficult situation you must first of all put an oxygen mask on yourself and live while you live. Moreover, it is especially pleasant to do this on the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea.