L’Immensità review – infu­ri­at­ing hash of sentimentality

It’s been a hot minute since there’s been any UK sight­ings of films by the tal­ent­ed Ital­ian direc­tor Emanuele Cri­alese. Cer­tain­ly the last mem­o­rable one was way back in 2006 with his mov­ing immi­grant saga, Gold­en Door, which show­cased a film­mak­er who was able to mix a sat­is­fy­ing cock­tail of roman­tic sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and flinty real­ism. With his new film L’Immensità, which pre­miered at the 2022 Venice Film Fes­ti­val to polite fan­fare, he seems to be once again try­ing to pour that same cock­tail, but this time, unfor­tu­nate­ly, the mea­sures are all off.

It’s 1970, which is a great excuse to have Pené­lope Cruz got a lit­tle hog wild in the cos­tume depart­ment – and on the lev­el of super­fi­cial sar­to­r­i­al plea­sures, the film does not dis­ap­point. She plays Clara, har­ried moth­er-of-three who is forced by her tac­i­turn hus­band Felice (Vin­cen­zo Ama­to) to accept her role as the stay-at-home matri­arch, tend to the kids and make sure their plush Roman apart­ment is kept neat and tidy for her arrival back from the office.

It’s some­thing of an open secret that Felice is canoodling with his sec­re­tary, and so Clara begins to sub­tly shift towards the chil­dren in terms of ally­ship and affec­tion. Of the younglings, there’s quin­tes­sen­tial tiny ter­ror Gino (Patrizio Fran­cioni), cute tod­dler Diana (Maria Chiara Goret­ti) and there’s also the gen­der-ques­tion­ing Adriana/​Andrea/​Adri (Lua­na Giu­liani) who refus­es to wear the frilly dress­es expect­ed of them, and instead sports shirts, jeans, track­suits and a short-cropped side-parting.

Though Clara is sym­pa­thet­ic towards Adri’s bur­geon­ing sense of lib­er­a­tion and under­stand­ing, she knows that, as a moth­er, it’s her job to pro­tect her child from the brick­bats of social con­ser­vatism and the expec­ta­tions of con­formist fam­i­ly mem­bers who view Adri as lit­tle more than a rebel. Moments of bliss­ful pri­vate escape are depict­ed via var­i­ous retro musi­cal inter­ludes that are nim­bly realised by Crialese. 

It’s a very well mean­ing film, yet its explo­ration of gen­der dys­pho­ria is very sur­face-lev­el in com­par­i­son to reams of oth­er, supe­ri­or films on the sub­ject. It feels as if Cri­alese wants to explore this sub­ject mat­ter with­out poten­tial­ly alien­at­ing an audi­ence who may dis­agree with the stance it takes, so every­thing polit­i­cal is soft edged, and Adri’s dilem­ma is nudged to the back­ground in the film’s final act.

In many ways it’s an infu­ri­at­ing film that wastes a lot of good tal­ent and good inten­tions. After an intrigu­ing set-up, the film spins its wheels and opts for repeat­ing scenes and motifs to both fill out the run­time and avoid putting its polit­i­cal mon­ey where its mouth is. Cruz is typ­i­cal­ly com­mand­ing in the lead, switch­ing between brassy con­fi­dence and frag­ile melan­choly, and her chem­istry with Giu­liani cer­tain­ly helps things along. Yet, in all, L’Immensità is a bit of a half-heart­ed mess that reach­es for orig­i­nal­i­ty but is nowhere near grab­bing it. 

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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