Strong, moving, naturalistic family drama from Italy, fine but flawed, an award-winner for writer/director Daniele Luchetti and lead actor Elio Germano, without Stateside release it remains too little known. Germano plays a hustling construction sub-contractor, working a crew of ‘guest workers’ (‘illegals’ from Romania) as part of a housing project not far from Rome. Tied down, not unhappily, by a pregnant wife & a couple of young boys, with a large, loving extended family in the area, his situation is shaken up by a pair of tragedies that leave him bereft and suddenly ambitious, grabbing an opportunity to move up and supervise a new building. Serious risk for serious reward if he gets it right, but professionally & personally he’s in over his head from the start. His hustling ways only taking him so far as his men threaten to leave just as finances from a shady friend are ‘called in.’ Satisfying on many levels, the interaction with his family and the family of a man who died on-site exceptionally interesting, beautifully observed and very Italian.* (Laissez-faire Italian style parenting particularly hair-raising!) The flaw?; Luchetti’s shooting style, too tight/too jittery, overdosing on nervous jagged energy right from the start, leaving him nowhere to go when the story’s dramatic traps begin to snap shut. You adjust to it, but the film might be twice as effective if he held back in the first half of the film.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Also very Italian in how the men run the gamut in looks, whereas the woman are all knock-out beauties.
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