A homecoming and revision of the past in Mario Martone’s drama, nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 2022 Cannes Festival.
Naples-born Felice returns to his hometown after forty years of living in Egypt. He comes to visit his aging mother and help her sort things out at home. At first glance, the city seems to have changed little since his youth: the same squares and balconies filled with noisy people and rebellious youngsters racing motorcycles through the narrow medieval streets. Meeting with local priest, Padre Don Luigi, who is saving teenagers from the street and gangs, Felice learns about an organized crime group whose head is his childhood friend Oreste.
Martone embodies on the screen a parable about the looping of history: everything returns to square one. Apparent changes, be it an escape or a switch to a different faith, cannot save the protagonist from unsolved questions of the past—his relationship with a friend and the tragic events connecting them. Following Felice frame by frame through the city, falling asleep in a hotel room, and capturing every caring movement of his hands as he washes his mother, the audience sees all his inner impulses and how he thinks. Based on the eponymous novel by Neapolitan writer Ermanno Rea, what Martone’s
Nostalgia has in common with the literary form is the merging of the viewer/reader with the main character, the clarity of his logic and intentions.
Felice’s sense of nostalgia grows as he penetrates the fabric of the city during this short journey, trying to live the life he missed, one he abandoned forty years ago. The endless layers of Naples—human, affective-emotional, and historical (from unimaginable antiquity to the present)—also become a trap for memories of the past.
The film will be screened in Italian with Russian subtitles.
Nostalgia
Dir. Mario Martone
Italy, France, 2022. 117 min. 16+