A triumvirate of screenwriters basing their script on a book of news reportage, not surprisingly, is a formula for story overload. Such is the case in Italian filmmaker Marco Tullio Giordana's ambitious attempt to address Italy's immigrant problem.
Essentially divided into two distinctly different parts -- a movie and a film, "Once You're Born You Can No Longer Hide" has grains of what one might dub Italian Neo-neo Realism with its focus on the influx of African and Eastern European illegal immigrants into Italy. However, the opus' first movement, the movie part, is a family thriller, akin to a movie-of-the week as a young Italian boy falls overboard on his father's yacht.
Buoyed with the dynamics of the child's family, a hard-charging father (Alessio Boni) and a traditional mother (Michela Cescon), it's rousing and very involving. Most importantly, young Matteo Gadola's vibrant performance as Sandro draws us in. His decent character is, seemingly, our touchstone with Italy. Indeed, throughout this first section, Giordana's directorial hand is firm and the technical contributions top cabin, especially Roberto Forza's involving mix of subjective/objective shots
It's when the boy falls into the sea one evening that the production literally and figuratively goes overboard. After a harrowing, hallucinatory night in which the swim-team Sandro manages to keep afloat, he is picked up by what appear to be pirates. Not so, it's a boatload of African and Eastern European immigrants headed toward Italy. Crammed into a vessel that could best be called a junk( but not in the Chinese sense), the immigrants are at the mercy of their transporters, brigands. Sandro quickly bonds with a brother and sister from Rumania (Vlad Elexandru Toma, Ester Hazan), seemingly, the only Caucasians on the shabby boat.
In short, the storyline has takked from one survival trek to another as the immigrants must survive dehydration and the sadism of their transporters. They are ultimately cast adrift on their own and "saved" by Italian maritime border patrol.
Essentially, the scriptwriters have prismed the immigrant story through the most accessible foreigners, the two white European kids. The story now takks back and forth from a swing through the governmental bureaucracy to the personal reactions of Sandro's parents who contemplate adopting the youths. Ultimately, it drifts off toward ... well, toward nothing really. The film just fizzles and stops at an almost arbitrary point: We suspect that is some kind of summary statement of the whole immigrant situation, it just goes on. Indeed, another movie might involve the Ukrainian kids struggle to survive in a foreighn land that does not want them. Mainstream audiences, and even festival audiences, may not be as generous and feel like they've been cast adrift themselves.
Essentially divided into two distinctly different parts -- a movie and a film, "Once You're Born You Can No Longer Hide" has grains of what one might dub Italian Neo-neo Realism with its focus on the influx of African and Eastern European illegal immigrants into Italy. However, the opus' first movement, the movie part, is a family thriller, akin to a movie-of-the week as a young Italian boy falls overboard on his father's yacht.
Buoyed with the dynamics of the child's family, a hard-charging father (Alessio Boni) and a traditional mother (Michela Cescon), it's rousing and very involving. Most importantly, young Matteo Gadola's vibrant performance as Sandro draws us in. His decent character is, seemingly, our touchstone with Italy. Indeed, throughout this first section, Giordana's directorial hand is firm and the technical contributions top cabin, especially Roberto Forza's involving mix of subjective/objective shots
It's when the boy falls into the sea one evening that the production literally and figuratively goes overboard. After a harrowing, hallucinatory night in which the swim-team Sandro manages to keep afloat, he is picked up by what appear to be pirates. Not so, it's a boatload of African and Eastern European immigrants headed toward Italy. Crammed into a vessel that could best be called a junk( but not in the Chinese sense), the immigrants are at the mercy of their transporters, brigands. Sandro quickly bonds with a brother and sister from Rumania (Vlad Elexandru Toma, Ester Hazan), seemingly, the only Caucasians on the shabby boat.
In short, the storyline has takked from one survival trek to another as the immigrants must survive dehydration and the sadism of their transporters. They are ultimately cast adrift on their own and "saved" by Italian maritime border patrol.
Essentially, the scriptwriters have prismed the immigrant story through the most accessible foreigners, the two white European kids. The story now takks back and forth from a swing through the governmental bureaucracy to the personal reactions of Sandro's parents who contemplate adopting the youths. Ultimately, it drifts off toward ... well, toward nothing really. The film just fizzles and stops at an almost arbitrary point: We suspect that is some kind of summary statement of the whole immigrant situation, it just goes on. Indeed, another movie might involve the Ukrainian kids struggle to survive in a foreighn land that does not want them. Mainstream audiences, and even festival audiences, may not be as generous and feel like they've been cast adrift themselves.
- 5/17/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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