L’immensità: Penélope Cruz Anchors Italian Family Drama with a Twist

By Karen Gordon

Rating: B

Penélope Cruz anchors a lightly drawn drama about a family in a quiet state of turmoil in the Italian film L’Immensitá.

Set in Rome in 1970, the film finds Clara (Cruz) — a beautiful, warm, slightly free-spirited woman — married to Felice (Vincenzo Amaro). She is a stay-at-home mother to three young children under the age of 12: Gino (Patrizio Francioni), Diana (Maria Chiara Goretti), and Adriana (Luana Guiliani).

The film focuses most closely on her relationship with her eldest, 12-year-old Adriana, or Adri for short. On the cusp of adolescence, Adri believes firmly that she is in the wrong body. (I’m going to use the pronouns she/her to describe Adri since that’s true to the movie and the era).

Adri keeps her hair short, prefers to be called Andreá (Andrew), and is wrestling with her changing body and with the way the world sees her. When not at school, Adri wears pants or shorts, and is able to present as a boy, at least to some.

And that is true when she meets Sara (Penélope Nieto Conti), a girl about her own age, part of a group of Roma who have taken over an undeveloped parcel of land nearby. There is an instant attraction, and the two flirt and sneak away a few times when they can get away from prying adult eyes. For Adri, it's a glimpse at a potential future.

Adri is, by nature, determined, but not an angry or terribly rebellious child. She’s well-loved by her extended family, including a flock of cousins, aunts and uncles, who gather for vacations and holidays. Her feelings about her gender are known within the nuclear family and come up as tensions rise at times, but don’t dominate.

In other words, the film isn’t about judging Adri, or even contemplating what her future life might look like. It stays in the here and now, with a 12-year-old navigating her world.

Clara and Adri are close. Clara takes Adri’s feelings about her gender seriously and is watchful but doesn’t prolong the discussion. She’s not cruel or judgemental, nor does she manipulate by withholding love and affection. Adri sees her beautiful mother in elevated terms. The two feel protective of each other, even if there are gulfs in understanding.

There are other factors weighing on both, deeper problems in the family. All is not well in the marriage. Felice, a successful businessman, is a serial philanderer with a short temper who snaps at his kids and is capable of cruelty. There is a suggestion that he at times resorts to physical abuse, although that happens off-camera.

There are lots of emotional crosscurrents in L’Immensitá, but director Emanuele Crialese, who co-wrote the film, says it is his most personal. He has not made a heavy-handed movie about a family in constant state of falling apart. In some ways the film, with its setting in the relatively recent past, it feels a bit like an exercise in memory.

There are more moments of quiet fun and ordinary life — even joy — than scenes that show the pressures. Nor has Crialese, himself transgender, made a film that leans into issues around gender dysmorphia or identity in children, advocating one way or the other.

Rather, the film feels more like a look into the life of an ordinary family whose lives are materially comfortable, but often emotionally shaky, mostly because of the fractured relationship between the parents. How can children find a firm footing in life if there’s so much uncertainty?

The immensity of the emotional issues weighs on each character in their own way, especially Clara, who is committed to staying in this loveless marriage despite what it costs her yet never loses her centre of gravity when it comes to her children.

But leaving things open to interpretation is both a strength and weakness of the film. Some things happen that seem out of the blue and without enough context. At the same time, Crialese avoids melodrama and big emotional crescendos, which would be a jolt given the naturalistic feeling of the movie.

He relies on his cast for the nuances that give us a sense of the relationships between the characters. And strong performances by the always formidable Cruz and newcomer Guiliana are particularly compelling.

We know from what we’ve seen that there are many questions that must come to a head at some point, but what will happen and where each of them will go from where Crialese leaves them is yet to be written.

L’Immensitá. Directed by Emanuele Crialese, written by Crialese, Francesca Manieri and Vittorio Moroni. Starring Penelope Cruz, Vincenzo Amaro, and Luana Guiliani. In theatres May 26.