Marinated Mediterranean feature is beautiful to watch but sparse in emotionality.
Writer-director Emanuele Crialese’s picturesque portrait of a simple life has all of the right elements in place to make this the tasty foreign treat, such as barefoot misfits that remind us of a dozen vocally-filled testosterone Italian boys in neo-realist films, a beautiful worn-out sun-colored town backdrop, a brown-tanned Valeria Golino Rain Man as a playful, yet obtuse sun-dress wearing character and yes its even got subtitles.
Respiro is Crialese’s version of the Big Blue without the Big Blue, the jagged edges of a rock surface island take up most of the foreground while the crisp, transparent waters are used more in a symbolic context rather than a setting. Once the characters and the cameras submerge themselves underwater, they fight to hold their breath or catch a mouthful of air which gives the film a themed outline about how people hold back from their feelings or show the many vicious ways in which they let them out. Its hard to get a grasp of this family of characters, the young very pest of a brother and the maturing daughter serve no purpose to the principle triangle of the patriarch, the matriarch and the child. However, the story tells us that there are some reversal of traditional roles, giving us a father with the temper of an adolescent boy, a boy in the image of the protector and a woman with less maternal instincts than your typical Italian mother, in fact see seems like an attention-grabbing dressed down version of Monica Belluci from Malèna .
Respiro is based on the legend of how a woman almost cursed a town and then how she became ostracized only to become the salvation of the place and we are meant to understand this as seen through the eyes of Pasquale, but we are treated to him getting slapped behind the head instead of digging deep into this young mans burden of caring for the one who should be caring for him. Golino never fully grasps her character with a performance that merely shows a couple of signs of trouble without some deeper thought about her condition-is it sunstroke, a desperation of wanting something more than village life or a husband who doesn’t understand her, or is it about the deportation threats or the suicidal tendencies? These questions get posed but are far from being answered. The problem with the film is that it fails to cast a net wide enough to get us emotionally involved, while it takes a full first act to figure out whose story is more important, we then come to realize that the overall theme is the true character of the film. There are some nice glimpses of life which will make a connection with audiences such as the sequence where the little boy and the whole village seem amazed about a made in China toy train.
After being treated to some fine young protagonists in Sweet Sixteen and Raising Victor Vargas, I was let down by the lack of emphasis placed upon this confused boy who shares too much of his screen time with either insignificant characters or sequences that show but don’t detail the complications found inside what appears to be a mildly distraught mother. Instead of being truly burdened, he seems mildly distracted. What makes the film such a dry import, is that the stormy waters are shown but never indulge the viewer with some sort of explanation about the different frame of minds leaving Respiro as a nice film to watch, but with nothing more to enjoy. If the film seems confused, it because perhaps the hot summer sun somehow burnt a couple of the pages of script, though it has the ingredients to charm us, it does everything but, and a saintly symphony of squandering feet is not exactly the quality I was looking for and nor is it particularly gripping.
