18/20
Tale
1944, Vermiglio, a remote mountain village. The arrival of Pietro, a deserter, into the family of the local teacher and his love for the teacher’s eldest daughter will change the course of everyone’s lives. Italy’s official submission for the ‘Best International Feature Film’ category of the 97th Academy Awards in 2025. Close-up reference: Why Do We Need a Venice Film Festival? (2024). Beautifully shot and well-acted, but nothing interesting happens in 2 hours. Too many poems start but never finish; too many characters to describe any character with any depth or for the audience to identify with any of them. There is no discernible message or revelation. The film was clearly made to please the art world snobs who provide the subsidies that allow such mass-market films to exist. To this end, the director is so eager to be taken “seriously” that there is no trace of humor: everyone behaves in what the Germans call animal seriousness.