Il Mio Corpo

Oscar is a mohawked Sicil­ian boy on the cusp of adult­hood. Spend­ing his days recov­er­ing met­al with his broth­er and father to sell on to scrap met­al mer­chants, he is the most com­mon tar­get of his father’s cru­el sense of humour and seems jad­ed beyond his years.

Stan­ley is a Niger­ian immi­grant, recent­ly award­ed a cov­et­ed two-year visa to remain in Sici­ly. He is wit­ty and spir­i­tu­al but dis­ap­point­ed for how his life has turned out. ​“They tell you it’s easy to inte­grate but it’s a trap,” he tells his friend, ​“don’t lis­ten to them, they’re liars.”

Over the course of Michele Pennetta’s ambling pseu­do-doc­u­men­tary, lit­tle changes for either of our leads, and any par­al­lels between their sto­ries are nev­er made explic­it. With­out con­text it would be impos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish it from a nat­u­ral­is­tic script­ed nar­ra­tive: there are no inter­views, nar­ra­tion or explic­it the­sis. There is very lit­tle dia­logue or con­text giv­en beyond a few brief con­ver­sa­tions between their fam­i­ly and friends.

Long shots of Oscar rid­ing his bicy­cle around the Sicil­ian hills are so seam­less and qui­et a camera’s pres­ence seems impos­si­ble, noth­ing can be heard but the changes of gear and gusts of wind. The images have a rare beau­ty to them: the Sicil­ian scenery is at once idyl­lic and des­o­late, the church­es are osten­ta­tious but invit­ing and the gold­en coast­line pris­tine but alien­at­ing. There is a par­tic­u­lar poet­ry in the use of shad­ows that loom large behind Stan­ley like bad omens.

Both Stan­ley and Oscar are vic­tims of their cir­cum­stances, bound by abu­sive par­ents and a dehu­man­is­ing immi­gra­tion sys­tem. Their melan­cholic lan­guor both com­ments on Sici­ly and speaks to a uni­ver­sal ennui. For all of Il Mio Corpo’s dream­like poet­ry, the film wash­es over you so gen­tly it’s hard to engage with it ful­ly, but in terms of push­ing the bound­aries of what doc­u­men­taries can be its impres­sion is everlasting.