Luca Guadagnino, for better or for worse, is an arbiter––and cultural signifier––of taste. Follow his lead and you are assured a sensuous journey, albeit one that never goes too far beneath the surface. In the years since’s Call Me By Your Name, Guadagnino has put his weight behind up-and-coming voices whose films are also aesthetically pleasing and intellectually promising. There’s the Italian director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino (Antonia, Beckett) and, more notably, the Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili (April). Last year, Giovanni Tortorici, a former assistant director for Guadagnino on the HBO series We Are Who We Are, added his name to this list when Diciannove premiered in the Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti sidebar, where it was well-received by critics. A semi-autobiographical coming-of-age picture about a repressed homosexual intellectual under the Tuscan sun? Consider me seated.
Just like Leonardo, its 19-year-old protagonist played by Manfredi Marini, Diciannove is marked by a restless listlessness. When we first encounter him in Palermo circa 2015, Leonardo is packing his things for London, where he intends to live with his sister Arianna (Vittoria Planeta) and study economics. But a few weeks after having a taste of the city’s vibrant nightlife and feeling out-of-place, he transfers to Siena, where he can pass his days holed up in a shabby room reading the works of Daniello Bartoli and preparing himself for disputes with his literature professors. Over the course of a year we watch Leonardo as he matures, reinforcing his ideas on morality and running into the limits of––while garnering hard-won insight on––the world.
What is remarkable about Diciannove, if not its unoriginal substance, is a unique style. Aided by cinematographer Massimiliano Kuveiller and Guadagnino’s recent go-to editor Marco Costa, Tortorici punctuates the film with a series of gestures––sudden sequences of slow-motion, pseudo-surrealist montages, abrupt zoom-ins, fade-outs, freeze-frames, and poorly designed animation sequences. Oftentimes these gestures seek to represent a shift in his state of mind, as when Leonardo silently explores his sexuality. Whether it’s on a train––where he catches through the reflection on the window that the man opposite is pleasuring himself––or his infatuation and obsession with a local, underaged teen, Diciannove‘s form reflects his arousal and excitement, sequences which are infused with David Tarantino’s inspired music choices.
But the difference between Tortorici and Guadagnino (or Xavier Dolan and Sofia Coppola and Wong Kar-wai before them) is that their films remained absorbing outside the flights of fancy; they had solid narratives with stakes that benefitted from these intermittent aesthetic amplifications. Leonardo, intentionally so, merely meanders along––partying, lusting, absorbing himself in his texts––but it amounts to little interest or drama. Diciannove sustains a lethargic, summery mood while yearning for consequence. Of course there is the sense that there are plot threads in our life––e.g. Leonardo’s nosebleed––that don’t result in anything, and that this is, indeed, part and parcel of the experience of being nineteen. But Tortorici goes nowhere with this conceit, a mere container of time for this self-absorbed, unlikable man’s growth period, resulting in a stylish yet vapid portrait of narcissism.
“Be careful of fanaticism which can lead to stupidity and fabrication,” the Italian philosopher Sergio Benvenuto says in a cameo at film’s end. “Be careful because your particular case does not count as a universal case… in short, you’re a poor wretch.” Leonardo hangs his head in reflection, seeming to absorb the criticism, but after he leaves his home, roaming the streets at night as a smug smile appears on his face, it’s apparent that he has no intent to change. Benvenuto is yet another authority figure to rebel against.
Diciannove opens in theaters on Friday, July 25.
The post Diciannove Review: Giovanni Tortorici’s Debut Feature is Full of Style But Lacks a Backbone first appeared on The Film Stage.
