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FILMS Italy

Review: Isabelle

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- Italian filmmaker Mirko Locatelli's third feature stars Ariane Ascaride in a noir family drama

Review: Isabelle
Samuele Vessio and Ariane Ascaride in Isabelle

After his debut in 2008 with Il primo giorno d’inverno (65th Venice Film Festival, Orizzonti section) and Foreign Bodies [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mirko Locatelli
film profile
]
(in competition at the 2013 Rome Film Festival) produced with his company Strani Film, Mirko Locatelli has set his sights even higher with his third feature film, Isabelle [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, involving the expert French actress, Ariane Ascaride, adored by film-lovers. The project also involves Ariane's husband, the producer and director Robert Guédiguian,who joined the co-production with Agat Films & Cie. Locatelli has maintained the intimate and painful approach of his previous films, but in Isabelle he includes a few new elements characterised by the strong presence of a mature woman and some decidedly noir features that serve to enhance the story.

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We are in the hills, near Trieste, where the university astronomy professor Isabelle lives in a large house surrounded by vineyards. In the first scene, we see the French woman inexplicably approaching the marble quarries of Aurisina, in the Karst. We later find out that the rich quarry owner’s 22-year-old daughter died in a car crash in which her brother Davide (Samuel Vessio) was also injured. Incognito, Isabelle goes to the hospital to find the young man, who is also one of her students. When Isabelle's son Jérôme (Robinson Stévenin) turns up at her house unannounced from France, overwhelmed, almost terrified, we clock that the mother and son may be responsible for the incidents that led to the car accident that night. The film is suddenly tinged with a 'giallo' feel, but Isabelle is predominantly a family drama – as was Foreign Bodies – employing an almost theatrical system in which the protagonist has free rein. The morbid relationship between mother and son in this very dramatic situation and the even more ambiguous relationship between the teacher and the handsome student David – who the woman tries to "adopt" in order to alleviate her sense of guilt – turns into a dangerous game, which Isabelle believes she is in control of. Symbolically, this determined professor, who is so accustomed to dark matter and the expansion of the universe will slowly begin to reveal her inadequacies as a mother and a human being. 

The screenplay, written by the director himself with Giuditta Tarantelli, won the Best Screenplay award at the 42nd edition of Montreal World Film Festival. But it is precisely the writing that is flawed. Mother and son bicker, screaming at each other too often and for long periods of time, without always managing to restore the underlying drama. The story hesitates to take a solid direction and while Ascaride acts with conviction, as always, the young novice actor Samuele Vessio fails to express the sensuality and physicality that the role demands. Locatelli evidently has the ambition to make a film about good and evil by delving into a "dark matter," which is certainly not easy, but which nevertheless objectively requires greater maturity as a director.

Produced by Strani Film and Agat Films & Cie. with RAI Cinema and with support from MIBACT - Directorate General for Cinema and the Friuli Venezia Giulia Film Commission, Isabelle is due to be released in Italian cinemas on 29 November, distributed by Strani Film in collaboration with Mariposa Cinematografica.

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(Translated from Italian)

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