It’s January, mosquitos are out, the mercury is showing over thirty degrees Celsius, and news reports on Rome radio warn that “we’re experiencing temperature backwards.” The smoggy sky suggests an oncoming apocalypse, but the world-ending conditions can’t overcome the personal addictions, vices, and petty grievances of the cast of characters in Ginerva Elkann’s tiring and torpid I Told You So. The film unfolds a handful of stories of sex, religion, drugs, and love in a vision of the Eternal City you won’t see in travel brochures, in which its inhabitants strive to rise above their damned circumstances.
It all starts in the bedroom of Gianna (Valeria Brunie Tedeschi), a God-fearing woman who we find on all fours, praying for forgiveness mid-coitus. Her uneasy relationship to sex is due to her complicated, obsessive relationship with her ex-best friend Pupa (Valeria Golino), who holds a restraining order against her. The former pornstar is fully embracing the attention that has come her way thanks a minor social media resurgence, but it’s all she can do keep her head above troubled financial water. Pupa is practically a saint compared to Bill (Danny Huston), an American ex-pat and priest battling a heroin addiction. He’s trying to keep it together while his sister Fran (Greta Schacchi) is in town to scatter the ashes of their recently deceased mother. Also trying to keep from unraveling is Caterina (Alba Rohrwacher) who is just days into her sobriety, and aiming to reconnect with her young son Max, whose father (Riccardo Scamarcio) has been awarded custody. Lastly, there’s Gianna’s teenage daughter Mila (Sofia Panizzi), who is working through an eating disorder and a romance with a food delivery boy, all while handling her duties as a live-in caregiver for an elderly woman (Marisa Borini).
If that paragraph was exhausting to read, rest assured it’s exhausting to watch. Playing out in the territory of Short Cuts and Magnolia, the loosely connected, quasi-omnibus structure ups the ante by playing out across a single day as temperatures in Rome continue to rise with each passing minute to unimaginable levels. The problem is that, outside of Pupa, none of these tales are particularly captivating, but more troublesome is that its thematic undercurrent is fairly thin. The film’s attempt to parallel religious obsession with serious addictions is reaching at best. Meanwhile, Elkann can’t quite determine if we’re all doomed or if there’s still hope in the face our certain demise. So she endeavors to split the difference but none of its convincing.
After a lively opening that establishes its ensemble, I Told You So quickly settles into a dull, drearily paced grind as it flips from story to story without any particular rhyme or reason. The only thing really keeping the picture moving along is Golino’s charmingly desperate performance as Pupa. The porn star might be years out of the game, but Golino completely owns and works the sexiness Pupa still feels charging through her. It’s the brightest, funniest light in the entire film, and it becomes increasingly difficult to share our time with Pupa with anyone else. However, Rohrwacher and Panizzi do make the most of their fairly one-dimensional roles, bringing an endearing sensitivity to their characters.
“It’s God trying to tell us something,” Gianna says about escalating weather conditions, navigating the film with a purpose she believes is divined from a higher power. If only Elkann swaggered a bit more with that kind of confidence. Even as the smeared orange cinematography by Vladan Radovic grows thicker as the sweat slick heat rises, I Told You So stays stuck, unable to carve a meaningful path through the disaster of its own making.
Director: Ginevra Elkann
Screenplay: Ginevra Elkann, Chiara Barzini, Ilaria Bernardini
Cast: Marisa Borini, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Valeria Golino, Danny Huston, Sofia Panizzi, Alba Rohrwacher, Greta Scacchi, Riccardo Scamarcio
Producers: Elena Recchia, Lorenzo Mieli, Simone Gattoni, Malcom Pagani, Moreno Zani, Mauro Monachini
Cinematography: Vladan Radovic
Production design: Roberto De Angelis
Editing: Desideria Rayner
Music: Riccardo Senigallia
Sound: Vincenzo Urselli
Production companies: The Apartment Pictures (Italy), Rai Cinema (Italy), Tenderstories (Italy), Small Forward (Italy)
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Platform)
In English, Italian
100 minutes
