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The Son's Room
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Alongside
such distinguished dramas as Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter (1998)
and Pedro Almodovar’s All About My Mother (1999), Nanni
Moretti’s The Son’s Room is another film that tackles the
difficult subject of a child’s tragic death and its consequent devastating
effects on remaining family members.
Moretti
– after twenty years of unusual, hybrid work – raised suspicion when he chose
this as his first foray into mainstream drama. Was it a bid for cultural
respectability?
Happily,
the film rises far above such kneejerk reactions. Although a death is at its
centre, grieving – and the difficult matter of getting beyond grieving – is its
true subject. Moretti’s master stroke is to make the family’s father (played by
the director) a psychotherapist. It is in the interactions – some hilarious,
some shocking – between Moretti and his patients that we grasp the film’s
complex, empathetic understanding of human behaviour.
After
his brush with mortality, the therapist finds that he can no longer dispense
advice, no longer make love, no longer even sing to
himself in mindless joy.
The Son’s Room offers a moving study of how this man and those around him
slowly revitalise themselves and return to the
MORE Moretti: Caro diario, A Brighter Tomorrow © Adrian Martin April 2003 |
