Turning naturalism into stylistic cool as she explores the psychological dynamics of a family of four on a banal summer vacation, Canadian-Italian filmmaker Luis De Filippis hits the right offbeat note in her first feature, Something You Said Last Night. The film simultaneously sucks you into the embarrassment and miseries of post-adolescence, in which two 20-something sisters struggle through the cusp of leaving home and setting up their lives in the big world, while Ren (Carmen Madonia), the trans sister, tries to break out of her self-imposed isolation. Though the film’s deliberate gaucheness and lack of drama will not be to everyone’s taste, it does manage to get under the skin of this normal yet extraordinarily modern family with diabolical skill. It won the Changemaker Award at Toronto, where it bowed, and the Sebastiane award at San Sebastian, effectively launching De Filippis on a career to watch. It was also popular with audiences at the Cairo Film Festival, where it played on the same day as the Pakistani film Joyland.
As they drive to their one-week holiday on a lake, with stoic Dad (Joe Parro) behind the wheel and talkative Mama (Ramona Milano) singing Italian songs along with the radio, it becomes clear that this happy family shares the same petty dysfunctionality that probably afflicts all human units of the kind. In the back seat, Ren and Sienna (Paige Evans) roll their eyes and refuse Mama’s demands they sing along. It seems that Ren decided to join the party at the last minute and doesn’t dare tell her folks she has been fired from her job and has no money. And Sienna keeps mum about her decision to drop out of college.
Notable by its absence is any drama over Ren’s transness; in fact, at no point is being trans discussed in the family or with outsiders. And yet, almost from start to finish, the world of Ren is filled with an electric tension just below the surface, a painful self-consciousness over her masculine face and body and her feminine personality, dressing and interests, highlighted by the unforgiving clarity of Norm Li’s lighting and the closeness of the camera. The dialogue suggests the whole trans debate has happened long ago in the family, and she is now accepted as herself without a second thought. And yet her mother’s offhand comments still have the power to sting: “after everything we’ve done for you”, “I had to be supportive of Renata”, “you are the biggest disappointment.” The innuendos apparently never end and Ren reacts with her usual passive aggression.
The dedramatized story, added to a convincing depiction of how boring it is to be squeezed into a vacation duplex with your family and share a fold-out bed with your flighty sister, does not make for exciting filmmaking, and audiences may tune out early to the constant bickering. Even sympathetic viewers may wish for a bolder approach to scenes of conflict and danger – one in a remote parking lot on a dark night surrounded by strangers where Sienna overdoes the booze, the other in a swimming pool where Ren finds herself alone with a local boy who is attracted to her – which instead are left to defuse and sputter out.
As Ren hesitantly feels her way towards independence from a suffocating mother and family, she inevitably attracts stares from men, which she interprets with a certain degree of paranoia and sometimes a bit of deadpan comedy. Rowing out to an island in the middle of the lake one day, Ren enjoys her moment of solitude in nature and falls asleep, only to discover that the wind has risen and the boat has disappeared. She has no choice but to ask for assistance from a young couple in a motorboat who had clearly come to the island with other intentions.
Vaping away in secret so her disapproving mom doesn’t find out, or holed up alone in the house doing nothing, Ren is an ordinary girl made special by Carmen Madonia’s awkward emotional authenticity and strong on-camera presence. As her sister, Evans is much harder to read beneath her thick veneer of party-girl silliness, but her loving relationship with Ren is a happy given, and both adroitly play off Milano’s irritating manipulation and Parro’s shell of silence.
Director, screenplay: Luis De Filippis
Cast: Carmen Madonia, Ramona Milano, Paige Evans, Joe Parro, Xxavier Woon-A-Tan, Augustus Oicle
Producers: Jessica Adams, Harry Cherniak, Luis De Filippis, Michael Graf, Michela Pini, Rhea Plangg
Cinematography: Norm Li
Editing: Naomi Katharina Preiswerk
Production design: Matthew Bianchi
Costume design: Mara Zigler
Music: Ella Van Der Woude
Sound: Chandra Bulucon, Gina Keller
Production companies: JA Productions (Canada), Cinédokké (Switzerland)
World Sales: Memento Films Intl.
Venue: Cairo Film Festival (International competition)
In English
96 minutes
