One of Italy’s most prolific actors, usually appearing in at least two films a year since 1995, Valerio Mastandrea is also one of many on-camera talents who decided to work behind the camera as well: his first feature, Ride, premiered at the Turin Film Festival in 2018, but failed to make an impression afterwards. His second film, Feeling Better, which was selected to open Venice’s Orizzonti competition, will probably play better domestically by virtue of also having him as the lead, after he chose not to appear in his previous directorial effort.
The characters, none of them named, exist in their own little world, a microcosm within the confines of a hospital in Rome. As it quickly transpires (this is all shown in the extended opening sequence), it really is their own world, as no one appears to notice them: they’re all coma patients, somehow interacting with each other on a different plane of existence. All they can do is wait for one of two things to happen: death, or reawakening. One day, a new patient (Argentinian actress Dolores Fonzi) arrives, and her presence causes the protagonist (Mastandrea) to re-evaluate his general attitude, as he suddenly finds himself genuinely caring for another person, despite the theoretically ephemeral nature of their relationship.
Over the years, Mastandrea has developed a somewhat curmudgeonly acting persona, a style for which this latest project, which he also co-wrote, is tailor-made, as the unnamed male lead walks through the hospital corridors in seemingly uncaring fashion, placing the whole otherworldly story in an oddly grounded context (in that sense, the Venice selection, on a sort of opening day double bill with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, was a weirdly inspired one). It’s an afterlife with no actual afterlife, a limbo where everyone is on hold, captured in deliberately drab shades of almost gray by cinematographer Guido Michelotti.
Then again, despite the implications of the premise, the ghost story, such as it is, was never the top priority for the actor-director: at its core, Feeling Better is a love story, and the romance angle is where the material really soars, benefiting from the understated but gradually increasingly powerful chemistry between the gruff Mastandrea and the more vivacious Fonzi. Lino Musella (who was also in Ride), Barbara Ronchi and Laura Morante lend solid support, their interactions with the surrounding environment adding layers of (contained) worldbuilding from the very first scene.
For while the supernatural is subdued for most of the film, there are still rules to this microcosm Mastandrea had devised with his writing partner Enrico Audenino, rules that add to the movie’s off-kilter but oddly intriguing meditation on the concept of moving on (an idea that may have personal connotations for the filmmaker, who previously played a fictionalized version of his now deceased friend Mattia Torre in the hospital-set TV drama La linea verticale and also oversaw the completion of the film Don’t Be Bad after the death of Claudio Caligari). And although the tonally jarring final stretch – a clumsy attempt to make some of the ideas more literal than implied – gets in the way, there are enough grace notes to keep this endeavor from becoming an overly ambitious vanity project.
Director: Valerio Mastandrea
Screenwriters: Enrico Audenino, Valerio Mastandrea
Cast: Valerio Mastandrea, Dolores Fonzi, Lino Musella, Giorgio Montanini, Justin Alexander Korovkin, Barbara Ronchi, Luca Lionello, Laura Morante
Producers: Viola Prestieri, Valeria Golino, Francesco Tatò, Oscar Glioti, Moreno Zani, Malcom Pagani
Cinematography: Guido Michelotti
Production design: Roberto De Angelis
Costume design: Veronica Fragola, Carlotta D’Alessio
Music: Tóti Guðnason
Sound: Fabio Conca, Daniela Bassani, Marzia Cordò, Thomas Giorgi, Francesco Lilli, Carmine Razzano
Production companies: HT Films, Damocle, Tenderstories, Rai Cinema
World sales: Fandango Sales
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti – Opening film)
In Italian
93 minutes
