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
In films like Volver, Parallel Mothers, Everybody Knows, and now L’immensità, Penélope Cruz has cornered the market on playing mother figures that are both larger than life and movingly earthy. As Clara, the loving Spaniard expatriate trying to raise her children while staying married to an unfaithful man in 1970s Rome, Cruz does some of the best work of her already incredible, multilingual career.
To say director Emanuele Crialese’s camera falls in love with Cruz would be an understatement. She is lovingly shot and framed (even her Sophia Loren bob brings attention to her expressive eyes) and we don’t even need to hear her speak to know whoever’s gaze she’s under has completely fallen under her spell.
This adoration takes on a heartbreaking twist when we realize the camera is acting as a surrogate for Clara’s eldest, Adriana (Luana Giuliani) who was assigned female at birth,...
To say director Emanuele Crialese’s camera falls in love with Cruz would be an understatement. She is lovingly shot and framed (even her Sophia Loren bob brings attention to her expressive eyes) and we don’t even need to hear her speak to know whoever’s gaze she’s under has completely fallen under her spell.
This adoration takes on a heartbreaking twist when we realize the camera is acting as a surrogate for Clara’s eldest, Adriana (Luana Giuliani) who was assigned female at birth,...
- 1/31/2023
- by Jose Solís
- The Film Stage
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