Italian-Io Non Ho Paura

The Italian film Io Non Ho Paura (I’m not Scared) by Gabriele Salvatores is about a young boy, Michele, living in an imaginary small town in Italy, who stumbles upon a dark secret that leaves him stranded between the adult world and the innocence of the child world. He is the only young one who knows about the secret that the whole rest of the town has kept hidden until now and it falls upon him to leave his innocence behind and act as an adult. His life style before the discovery of the kidnapped, hostage boy, named Fillipo, was relatively with few worries and restrainments: be home for dinner, take care of your sister and respect your parents’ wishes. Most of his time was spent in the sunny fields on the outskirts of town playing with friends, which is where he found the boy.

Instead of telling his parents like any normal child with a night terror, he kept it to himself and went back to explore, showing that he was tough to begin with. And as a kid it took him a while to find out what he was really dealing with and the severity of the situation.Rather than calling the police or trying to tell someone, he took it upon himself to feed and entertain the boy, promising to come back the next day instead of working on setting him free.

When Fillipo is found and gets out of the hole for the first time there is still innocence in him, even after all he’s been through, as they do not run and try to escape but play in the fields. At the beginning he was convinced he was dead (and most likely not too far away due to neglect) but somehow recovered psychologically from possibly months of alienation and abuse. From the dirty, half-dead prisoner he emerges from his hole in clean white robes and looks at the sun for the first time in ages, smiling.

Another instance where we can see Michele’s childhood regained is the way he narrates his situation. Under the cover of his blanket, he creates stories by night of the origin of the boy, one of him being a lost prince who needs to be brought back to his kingdom. He even trades a small toy car for the trust of a fellow troublemaking boy for the huge responsibility of keeping this a secret from the now violent townspeople. We can see that he feels alienated playing with his friends now, knowing this secret and keeping it to himself, and is distressed when it creates no reaction in his friend.

Not only can also see a loss of trust in his playmates, especially after the boy he entrusted with the secret rats him out, but we can see him becoming cold towards the adults, but never his parents. He still obeys them like any child would even when he discovers they are behind the kidnapping. At the end he runs to his dad even though he knows well enough his intentions are to murder his friend. A child will always see their parents as a safe place even though they may do terrible things at times and that is shown in this film. Even though the loss of innocence was great, he still remained more or less a child.

Italian-Primo Amore

 The film Primo Amore by Matteo Garrone is dark, depressing and not easy to digest, quite literally. It deals with the issue of the falling self esteem of women and the obsessive behaviors that stem from this insecurity, also the control and power some men exert on these women to manipulate them into what they find as beautiful, instead of seeing beauty in the original body.

Although this film was well done and portrays an important message, it was still very unnerving to watch. Admitted the film was shot to be dark and somber, it’s not the reason the audience may have found it to be disturbing. Maybe not even the fact that the movie showed a woman starving under the control of a man. The most shocking thing about this film was the deterioration of the characters, namely the way they transformed from civilized humans and broken down to vicious beasts by the end and how the camera catches these changes.

From the beginning, you can tell the man Vittorio is an odd character, saying to his blind date Sonia, “I thought you would be thinner.” This is a particularly shocking thing to say to anyone at all, nonetheless someone you have just met. It is only later that we see that Vittorio isn’t just rude; he’s vicious and controlling.

“You can only eat when I’m around,” he tells her and she nods shyly

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In the beginning Sonia was, or seemed, very confident in mind and body, shown to us as she poses nude for an art class that she works for. Compared to then, she seems faded and manipulated, almost afraid of Vittorio wrath. The way the film was shot you can also see that as she sheds off the weight and starts to become skeletal, she also is shown by the camera as disappearing as a human being. There are many shots of her that are focused on her back, particularly her spine. It has become the most protruding area on her body, the jutting out bones as if they were covered by philo pastry. Another way she is shown to fade is the lighting and focus. Like someone running for miles without water, the camera becomes blurry when showing her perspective. That and the washed out lighting and dull colors used for her as opposed to the beginning where everything was more yellow and bright.

The point at which they both finally snap is the end. Sonia, after presumably starving herself to the point of sickness for a man who doesn’t truly love her, starts eating against Vittorio wishes. When he is shown by the camera in the restaurant, he is blurry and dark yet the plate of pasta is in focus and shining like gold. This foreshadows her return to consciousness and control as she ignores him and ravenously tries to devour everything in sight. Next, she is shown in a dark stone room, naked and curled up in a very animalistic sort of way while Vittorio rages and roars. He isn’t just seen as simply rude but dangerous and uncontrollable as the blazing fire next to him embodies his wrath. Sonia also decides to unleash her inner self and does what any furious, starving animal would do; she kills him.

This movie not only deals with the issues of self-image and obsession, but also portrays what it takes to turn an ordinary human being into something less than human when a simple necessity is ripped away. It was shown appropriately by means of camera work and lighting, giving the audience a disturbing insight as to what the human body becomes when pushed to the limits, becoming animalistic and eventually forcing them to rely on basic instincts of survival, even if it means killing.