Three inseparable friends, two boys and a girl, grow up in grinding poverty in the hinterlands outside of Rome in An Endless Sunday (Una sterminata domenica).
It’s a scenario out of an early Pasolini movie like Accattone or Mamma Roma, skillfully updated to reflect a contemporary world so bleak and futureless it hardly seems like it’s in Europe, and only the energy of the young protags lifts the spirits. Strong on establishing atmosphere, it’s much less convincing when a strained drama finally gets underway towards the end. The film, which counts Domenico Procacci and Wim Wenders among its producers, should anyway get noticed when it bows in the Venice Orizzonti section.
Debuting director Alain Parroni, who has a solid background in cinematography and short films, does an eye-catching job with camera, editing and performance. Another aesthetic influence that is very obvious here is Terence Malick’s lyrical naturalism, felt in the intense closeups of faces and painterly low-angle shots of overgrown fields and cloudy skies with a farmhouse in the distance. They make a strong statement about the inner purity of these young human beings, who otherwise might be interpreted as simple sociological statistics. But it’s doubtful whether they have any more chance of digging themselves out of their unschooled, thrill-based stupor than the lost souls in so many movies about Italy’s South.
The same atmosphere of danger and impending doom that is a staple of mafia and camorra films cloaks Alex (Enrico Bassetti), whose 19th birthday it is, his jumpy, hyperactive younger friend Kevin (Zackari Delmas) who is already an accomplished thief, and their cool mutual friend/possibly lover, Brenda (Federica Valentini), all braids and tattoos, who looks permanently distracted.
A celestial chorus opens the film on a universal note, a contribution from prolific Japanese composer Shiro Sagisu, whose unexpected music makes us look at the banality of life with different eyes. It soon gives way to a pumping disco beat from a speeding convertible on a dark night, driven by kids who are crazy high and paying no attention to the road whatsoever. It’s a parent’s worst nightmare, if there were any parents present in the film (there aren’t.) Tires blow out and they run out of gas, but nothing stops the party.
To celebrate Alex’s birthday they take the train to Rome with its crowded streets and glorious Baroque buildings and fountains; it is another planet compared to the emptiness of the countryside amid soulless residential complexes in the middle of nowhere. Rome is selfies by the river, horsing around the Vatican on a Sunday morning, while over loudspeakers Pope Francis’s familiar voice preaches to the faithful jamming St. Peter’s Square. The trio laughs off this iconic scene – for the moment – and moves on to desecrate some busts of Garibaldi’s soldiers with red lipstick; later Kevin steals a watch at the Bocca di Verità.
It’s tough to find an absorbing storyline in a film whose very title suggests “a day in the life” (though more time passes than that). Night and day flow freely into each other on this “endless Sunday”, creating a feeling of entrapment. The little band travels constantly – to nearby Rome, to the beach, to Brenda’s grandma’s place – yet they never seem to get anywhere.
Only the lanky, long-haired Alex even tries to get his life in gear, after Brenda tells him she’s pregnant. The idea of being a father stuns him with pride and its implications of responsibility. He stumbles onto a shepherding job on a backyard farm run by a grouchy old German hermit (Lars Rudolph, excellent) who lives in a shack and “keeps animals”. When a wild dog kills a lamb, he gives Alex an old rifle, and we spend the rest of the film waiting for the boy to use it. However, it’s a clumsy narrative device, and the ending simply doesn’t ring true.
The most interesting thing about An Endless Sunday is its mature grasp of film language and struggle to invent something new to express the experience of this place and this generation. The cinematography by D.P. Andrea Benjamin Manenti can be lush and sensuous, connecting the characters to the sea and the sky and to nature, then turns into complicated multi-layered shots that suggest the sensory overload of characters on the verge of adulthood.
Director: Alain Parroni
Screenwriters: Alain Parroni, Giulio Pennacchi, Beatrice Puccilli
Cast: Enrico Bassetti, Zackari Delmas, Federica Valentini, Lars Rudolph
Producers: Domenico Procacci, Laura Paolucci, Giorgio Gucci, Fabrizio Moretti, Wim Wenders
Cinematography: Andrea Benjamin Manenti
Production design: Marta Morandini
Costume design: Sara Cavagnini
Editing: Riccardo Giannetti
Music: Shiro Sagisu
Sound: Denny De Angelis, Giandomenico Petillo
Production companies: Fandango (Italy), Alcor (Italy), Art Me Pictures (Ireland), Road Movies (Germany) in association with Rai Cinema
World sales: Fandango Sales
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti)
In Italian
110 minutes
