sole (w&d carlo sironi; w. giulia moriggi, antonio manca)

Sole is an unspectacularly brave piece of filmmaking. Its braveness comes from its commitment to being unspectacular, The action at times appears to progress at a glacial pace. Yet what is occurring is that the pieces are being meticulously assembled so that as that plot simmers it will eventually come to a searing, devastating boil. An extended shot of the protagonist, Ermanno, playing the slot machines isn’t there by chance. It’s a seed in the narrative. 

The story is on on the one hand proto-modern European, and on the other as old as time itself. A young woman, Lena, dolefully played by Sandra Drzymalska, is pregnant. We never learn who the father might have been. In return for €10K, she agrees to give up the baby to the uncle and wife of Ermanno, (Claudio Segaluscio), a sullen youth whose blank face gives nothing away. The two live in a rented apartment for the final months of the pregnancy. Both are orphans. Ermanno’s father killed himself by jumping out of a window. Emotionally stunted, the two, bit by bit, begin to discover love and meaning from the other, without expecting it. When the child is born prematurely, they became, for a few short weeks, a family, albeit one that is doomed.

The financial exchanges that underpin the movie speak of an atomised modernity, where money is thicker than blood. They tell of the choices people are coerced to make in a globalised world, where the ties of family, barrio and culture have been cut. The ending of the film parachutes one back to being 21, to being condemned to discover the cruelty of the world, to feel the cold wind blowing in your face and realising you are going to have to learn to live with that cold wind for the rest of your life. It is an ending of astonishing power, because this is a sensation we have all had to confront at one point or another. It is for this reason that love exists: to teach us that there is hope in the world, and hope brings despair in its wake. 

Carlo Sironi manages the ingredients of his film with impeccable control. The remarkable acting of the two leads; the muted palette of the art design and the score, by the Polish composer Teoniki Rozynek, which is as fine a piece of music for camera as you are ever likely to encounter.