Well-intentioned films about marginalized people face the pitfall of reducing characters’ lives to their experience of persecution. Black characters in Hollywood’s anti-racist parables tend to stand in for a monolithic Black experience, while gay characters have often been defined solely by their sexuality. Emanuele Crialese’s autobiographical L’Immensita, a drama about a transgender preteen, Adri (Luana Giuliani), in early-’70s Italy, skirts this trap by capturing the textures and tensions of a life that’s not defined solely by anti-trans oppression.
As the film depicts with a certain resigned whimsy, Adri not only copes with routine teenage angst, but is also caught within a web of intersecting inequities, including domestic abuse, sexual harassment, and class prejudice. By turns wry and tragic, but never glib or mawkish, this is a visually rich and evocative drama about navigating the often treacherous path to adulthood.
Giuliani’s character was born Adriana. He tells his adoring mother,...
As the film depicts with a certain resigned whimsy, Adri not only copes with routine teenage angst, but is also caught within a web of intersecting inequities, including domestic abuse, sexual harassment, and class prejudice. By turns wry and tragic, but never glib or mawkish, this is a visually rich and evocative drama about navigating the often treacherous path to adulthood.
Giuliani’s character was born Adriana. He tells his adoring mother,...
- 5/13/2023
- by Pat Brown
- Slant Magazine
Starring a mother to a transgender boy living in 1970s Rome, Penélope Cruz appears as good as ever in the first trailer for Emanuele Crialese’s “L’Immensità.” The film will open in New York and Los Angeles on May 12 prior to a nationwide theatrical roll-out.
The preview slowly lays out its premise and openly presents the issue of dealing with a young child dealing with gender dysphoria well before a vocabulary or much of an understanding of such a thing existed. And it is refreshing to see a trailer for a non-English language film that actually has a fair amount of subtitle dialogue, as quite a few previews for “foreign” films tend to sell straight-up imagery and vibes over plot and conversational dialogue. That said, if you’re going to make a film set in the 1970s about a seemingly traditional family living realizing one of their children is trans,...
The preview slowly lays out its premise and openly presents the issue of dealing with a young child dealing with gender dysphoria well before a vocabulary or much of an understanding of such a thing existed. And it is refreshing to see a trailer for a non-English language film that actually has a fair amount of subtitle dialogue, as quite a few previews for “foreign” films tend to sell straight-up imagery and vibes over plot and conversational dialogue. That said, if you’re going to make a film set in the 1970s about a seemingly traditional family living realizing one of their children is trans,...
- 4/19/2023
- by Scott Mendelson
- The Wrap
L’Immensità Review — L’Immensità (2022) Film Review from the 45th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Emanuele Crialese, starring Penélope Cruz, Vincenzo Amato, Luana Giuliani, Patrizio Francioni, María Chiara Goretti, Alvia Reale, Mariangela Granelli, Carlo Gallo, Rita De Donato, and Clara Ponsot. Italian director Emanuele Crialese draws on his own experiences to [...]
Continue reading: Film Review: L’IMMENSITÀ: Intimate Story Sheds Bright Light on Family Issues in the Seventies [Sundance 2023]...
Continue reading: Film Review: L’IMMENSITÀ: Intimate Story Sheds Bright Light on Family Issues in the Seventies [Sundance 2023]...
- 2/8/2023
- by David McDonald
- Film-Book
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