04/12/2023 - With this sentimental thriller, Manfredi Lucibello employs a claustrophobic and virtuosic direction for an extraordinary one-woman show by Barbara Ronchi

Who knows whether the cinematographic genre of films set during the lockdown imposed by the Covid pandemic will fade out or become a subgenre, like the post-apocalypse zombie science fiction films in which the heroes wander around deserted cities. In Non riattaccare by Manfredi Lucibello, the sole Italian feature film in competition at the 41st Torino Film Festival, everything happens in real time over one night in March 2020, when the number of victims from the virus in Italy reaches almost a thousand a day. The coronavirus, however, has little to do with this story and the curfew only represents an opportunity to create the suspense necessary to a drama where the main characters are two exes. 

Lucibello gives his protagonist Barbara Ronchi the occasion to have 90 minutes “on the boards” all by herself, and this is already extraordinary, if not unique, in the Italian film landscape. The great actress from Rome, winner of the 2023 David di Donatello award for Settembre [+see also:
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Barbara Ronchi plays Irene, who is woken up in the middle of the night by the ring of her cell phone, in silent, quarantined Rome. A man is sleeping next to her. On the phone is Pietro (Claudio Santamaria, whom we will only see for a few minutes in the film’s finale), her ex-boyfriend, calling from a seaside villa an hour from the capital. The man is confused, clearly frantic. Having climbed onto the roof, he makes a veiled threat to throw himself into the void. Irene tries to distract him, to keep him on the phone, while she takes her car keys and goes to join him, hoping to arrive in time before he kills himself, this person she left 7 months earlier.

The next 80 minutes of the film take place entirely in the car, Irene on a direct line with a faceless voice. The immediate reference is Locke [+see also:
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The director has said that he wanted to shoot a love story like a thriller. However Non riattaccare, written by Lucibello together with Jacopo Del Giudice and based on the novel of the same name by Alessandra Montrucchio, lends itself to a double reading. On the one hand, it is a well-made psychological and sentimental thriller whose romanticism somewhat undermines the dramatic power of a love showdown. On the other hand, we can clearly see a woman who traumatically ended a harmful relationship with a weak and cowardly man, after she was “forced” to go live in Geneva, where Pietro worked, and to take antidepressants for her depression. A woman who is now running to his rescue, victim of a low self-esteem that will lead her towards an ironically cruel ending. The task of interpreting this is up to the viewer.

Non riattaccare was produced by Mompracem with Rai Cinema. I Wonder Pictures is distributing the film in Italy.

(Translated from Italian)