Giulia Grandinetti’s gripping short drama, Tria, is set in an alternative near present in which the oligarchs of an authoritarian Rome have instituted limits on procreation. In this world, couples – or at least certain couples – are only allowed to have three children; if they fall pregnant again, they must carry the new baby to term and then choose a child to have killed, prioritising the lives of males. It’s a deliciously terrifying scenario to provide the backdrop of a contained and charged short film. Grandinetti drops the audience into this nightmarish setting in media res – en route to a hospital where a fourth child will be born, and three adolescent daughters are confronted by an ominous fate.
Once their new bouncing brother has been brought into the world, sisters Zoe (Irene Casagrande), Iris (Anastasia Almo), and Clio (Sofia Almo) can do nothing but await their parents’ impossible choice. The film is split into two discrete scenes – one in which the girls make the most of the time they have left, and then the unnervingly ritual killing. The girls are all very comfortable with one another, they lie half-entangled on the floor as the baby that has condemned one of them cries from another room. Iris and Clio are played by real-life sisters and their relaxed physicality evokes a closeness that somehow makes what is about to happen feel all the more harrowing. “Have you ever kissed a boy?” asks oldest daughter Zoe of the younger Clio, before leading her siblings to a local park full of friends where they listen to music and dance, without inhibition.
Perhaps one of the most impressive aspects of Tria is the way it evokes a wider, complex, fictional reality beyond the confines of what is ostensibly a melodramatic tale of a family being forced to make a terrible decision. Zoe’s voiceover suggests that the family’s acquiescence to this savage diktat is in part due to the Roman state providing sanctuary – there is the suggestion of ethnic demarcation and the group at the park seems to represent a community of the disenfranchised. There are also clearly intimations of a callous patriarchy protecting its own at the expense of young women, as well as a religious orthodoxy regarding contraception and termination. It is impressive that with all of this happening, Tria remains most remarkable for the emotional weight of climax and its irreversible tearing asunder of a family, in more ways than one.
Director, screenplay: Giulia Grandinetti
Cast: Irene Casagrande, Anastasia Almo, Sofia Almo, Laura Giannatiempo, Ilir Jacellari, Tiziana Foschi
Producers: Riccardo Neri, Vincenzo Filippo
Cinematography: Eleonora Contessi
Editing: Niccolo? Notario
Sound: Giandomenico Petillo, Giulio Previ
Music: Lucia Alessi, Pier Sante Falconi, Balkan Lab Orchestra, Federico Pascucci
Production design: Luna Ranalli, Valeria Polieri
Production company: Lupin Film (Italy)
Venue: Venice Film Festival
In Italian
17 minutes
