previously published on Cineuropa
The premise of three
girls living with their father in isolation during the times of the
apocalypse sounds familiar, but first-time filmmaker Emanuela
Rossi, working from a script she co-wrote with Claudio
Corbucci (a prolific TV writer whose previous film credit
was the genre piece Index Zero), has tried to do something
fresh and in sync with contemporary thematic trends. Darkness
premiered in the Italian Panorama section of Alice nella Città, and
has now had its international premiere in the First Feature
Competition of Tallinn Black Nights.
Three sisters with
significant names, Stella (rising star of Italian cinema Denise
Tantucci), Luce (Gaia Bocci in her first
on-screen role) and Aria (Olimpia Tosatto, also a
newcomer), live with their father (Valerio Binasco,
of We Believed and The Beginners fame) in a
spacious, secluded, dark mansion. He tells them that something has
gone wrong with the sun, and two-thirds of the population died when
it happened. Outside is no place to be for a young girl, since only
the strongest of men can survive. So the father, when he is not at
home imposing his brutal upbringing methods on his daughters, goes
out every day to fetch food and other necessities. The sisters,
meanwhile, stay at home watching old fitness videos and playing games
usually led by Stella and normally aimed at reimagining the past they
shared with their late mother.
Stella is the oldest of
the three and remembers the world before the apocalypse – at least
well enough not to take their father's stories at face value. Also,
she is far from happy about being confined to the role of the abused
lady of the house. Luce has just got her first period, and the father
is shifting his incestuous focus onto her. Aria, the youngest one,
does not speak, and it is hard to tell what she thinks, knows or
understands about the situation. After an incident where Aria leaves
the house and Stella goes to fetch her, and after a couple of days of
the father's continuous absence, Stella decides to go out into the
world...
As she finds out, the
stories the father has been telling are a far cry from the truth, so
the titular darkness gets another metaphorical layer added to it: the
darkened rooms are less of a problem, and the real darkness here
comes from a life spent under the yoke of tyranny and abuse. Clearly,
Rossi's intention was to convert the template of a certain premise
into a profoundly feminist story of liberation, as is evident from
the fact that the film is dedicated to all of those girls who resist.
The problem she had to face is the predictability of the
dramaturgical conventions that she and Corbucci used to steer the
plot. That, together with the broadly sketched characters, relegated
to having a small bunch of basic characteristics, would suffice for a
straight-up genre film, but it does not work that well in this
melange of sorts, combining, as it does, post-apocalyptic science
fiction, thriller, family movie and fairy tale.
On the other hand, Rossi
makes up for this with her measured directing of the young actresses,
who all seem natural in their roles, the effort she made to provide
just the right number of details to build up the world and to create
a standout audiovisual experience through the set and costume design,
and the use of music, both classical and popular contemporary, as a
narrative tool. The shallow-focus cinematography of Marco
Graziaplena serves the purpose well and makes the most of
the locations, both interior and exterior.
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