Sweet Dreams

What if the words ​‘sweet dreams’, ten­ta­tive­ly whis­pered into your ear pri­or to a deep slum­ber, were the last you ever heard from you moth­er before she was swept off to com­mune with the angels? This is the tor­ture suf­fered by mummy’s boy scamp Mas­si­mo in the new film from Ital­ian vet­er­an Mar­co Bel­loc­chio, adapt­ed from a nov­el by Mas­si­mo Gramellini.

A mov­ing mon­tage opens pro­ceed­ings which presents the sim­ple joys expe­ri­enced by the young pro­tag­o­nist at just hang­ing out with his swad­dling moth­er (Bar­bara Ronchi) – they do the twist, they frol­ic, they watch TV togeth­er – she cov­ers his eyes at the moment a women dives from the side of a building.

The film explores the idea of how a par­ent plays a char­ac­ter when it comes to inter­fac­ing with their chil­dren, so the bruis­ing men­tal fric­tion of adult life is all but hid­den behind paint­ed smiles and arti­fi­cial ges­tures, even if the love is sin­cere. When those life-alter­ing words are whis­pered, Mas­si­mo falls into a trance-like tail­spin, par­tic­u­lar­ly as he is kept in the dark regard­ing the true fate of his moth­er. At one moment she is seri­ous­ly ill and can’t be seen in pub­lic, the next she’s being car­ried to the alter in a flower-strewn coffin.

The bulk of the film beyond this point traces Massimo’s deep-seat­ed trau­ma right into adult­hood. It affects his rela­tion­ship with his father, his work as a jour­nal­ist, and his rela­tion­ship with a nurse played by Bérénice Bejo. It’s a major prob­lem that he is some­thing of a depres­sive dullard and there are numer­ous points in the film his inabil­i­ty to dis­con­nect from this Freudi­an curse ring nag­ging­ly false. Bel­loc­chio doesn’t attempt to manip­u­late the mate­r­i­al into a gen­er­a­tion-cross­ing mur­der mys­tery, instead opt­ing to chart the emo­tion­al ups and down, which sad­ly offer lit­tle in the ways of sur­prise of insight.

The strongest moment in the film is a short flash­back sequence involv­ing the amaz­ing French actress Emmanuelle Devos. She is the moth­er of one of Massimo’s friends, and he has to sit their in string­ing awe as watch­es moth­er and son play-fight­ing in the sort of ultra-tac­tile way that he used to with his moth­er. Nicolò Cabras’ spiky per­for­mance as the young Mas­si­mo is a high­light, but it’s not enough to save this dawdling and sen­ti­men­tal (but, admit­ted­ly, beau­ti­ful­ly made) drag.