I figli della scimmia

A family can become a trap. In Tommaso Landucci’s I FIGLI DELLA SCIMMIA, duty and yearning pull a father apart. Dario cares for his disabled son Enrico, yet finds the glimpse of another version of fatherhood in his relationship with his teenage nephew Giacomo: freer, lighter, connected to passions he has lost. Landucci never turns this conflict into a moral equation. Co-written with Damiano Femfert, his screenplay works based on omissions, telling details and shifts in perspective, gradually exposing the tensions between affection and obligation. Guido Michelotti’s almost square framings keeps us close to Dario’s world, while the precise, fluid editing moves between the rhythms of care and the exhilaration of his motocross outings with Giacomo. The contrast is felt rather than overtly shown, with the camera observing the intimacy of domestic gestures and the freedom of the open road. At the film’s centre is Riccardo Scamarcio, whose admirably restrained performance lets fleeting glances and the smallest changes in posture betray impulses his character barely understands. His tenderness is genuine, but so is his capacity to wound. Landucci neither condemns nor absolves him; instead, he shows how an ordinary gesture of affection can unsettle an entire family. (Maria Giovanna Vagenas)

Tommaso Landucci: SALIM (2010, K), JOHNNY T. (2011, K), BIG EYE (2012, K), BLOODHOUND (2014, K), I LEVITANTI (2015, K), CAVEMAN (2021)