This beautiful film really is a very accomplished piece of work from Moretti, superbly acted, refreshingly direct and blessed with an ingenious, unexpected final act
No self-respecting sophisticate admits to crying in a film – unless in carefully ironised or sentimentalised terms which announce a warm tribute to your inner child, while leaving untouched the dignity of the outer adult. It is okay to say you cried at the soon-to-be-rereleased ET, for example, but how about an earnest film garlanded with arthouse laurels, targeted candidly at the emotions and indeed the tearducts of adults? Admitting to sniffles here is uncool, a boneheadedly obvious admission of defeat in the face of what are – surely? – its middlebrow, manipulative designs. But sniffling, like dozing or getting aroused, does happen; it’s the secret history of film criticism.
So I admit it. When I saw Nanni Moretti’s family tragedy The Son’s Room premiere at Cannes last summer I did sniffle, and the experience was intense enough to induce a strange, faintly headachey delirium for hours afterwards. And frankly only familiarity stopped the same thing happening when I saw it again this week. On its first outing it was by many ambiguously praised as the thinking person’s weepie, then scooped up the ultimate prize of the Cannes Palme d’Or. But this affecting and beautiful film really is a very accomplished piece of work from Moretti, superbly acted, refreshingly direct and blessed with an ingenious, unexpected final act.