‘My Birthday’: Venice Review

Dir: Christian Filippi. Italy. 2024. 91mins

Comforting fantasy confronts chilly actuality in My Birthday, the debut function from Christian Filippi which follows an indignant teenager who pins all his hopes for the long run on a reunion together with his unreliable mom. This appears destined to not finish nicely, however Filippi invests acquainted materials with power and uncooked emotion while additionally showcasing a fierce central efficiency from newcomer Zackari Delmas. A compact, approachable first function reveals the sort of promise which may propel it past its screening as a part of the Biennale Faculty Cinema part at Venice. 

A fierce central efficiency from newcomer Zackari Delmas

Impressed by the experiences of individuals Filippi met in workshops at foster houses in Rome, My Birthday is devoted to all those that are on the lookout for their place on the planet. It opens at boiling level, with distraught teenager Riccardino (Delmas) perched on a rooftop ledge and threatening to leap. Fellow residents of his foster dwelling both scoff or shout encouragement. Care employee Simona (Giulia Galassi) is ready to speak him down, and clearly has a delicate spot for an ungovernable boy who’s now days away from his 18th birthday. 

Petulant, misunderstood and completely indignant with the world, Riccardino has an extended line of antecedents that stretches from James Dean to Xavier Dolan. Delmas softens him sufficient to depart a sympathetic sheen on all his explosive outbursts and sense of injustice. It is a teenager who can go from zero to sixty on the slightest provocation. Filippi paints him very a lot as a caged animal with repeated pictures of him positioned towards a brick wall, staring out on the world by means of a wire fence (shades of Brando in 1954’s On The Waterfront), or shoulders hunched and squeezed right into a nook. He has spent 4 years within the foster dwelling however, to him, this security web stays a jail. All he needs is to restart his life with the mom he has seen solely a handful of instances throughout that interval.

Filippi’s storytelling has its roots in Italian Neo-realism and the movies of Ken Loach as he focuses on the life of somebody consigned to the margins of society. Handheld camerawork and excessive closeups imply that Riccardino is actually in your face as his future hangs within the steadiness. Filippi and co-writer Anita Otto discover methods to humanise him and make him distinctive, together with his ambition to turn out to be a bartender and expert cocktail maker. There are lighter touches in a uncommon friendship Riccardino has cast with one other boy within the foster dwelling, and within the understanding champion he has present in Simona. There are additionally two parallel and affecting sequences by which Riccardino dances exuberantly to a burst of music first with Simona, who is sort of a mom to him, after which together with his actual mom Antonella (Silvia D’Amico).

Riccardino’s choice to interrupt free and discover his mom steers the movie into fugitive highway film territory marked by disappointments and revelations. In her scenes, D’Amico captures the vulnerability and complexity of Antonella, an unpredictable free spirit, sentimental about her son however solely too conscious that she isn’t able to giving him the safe household life he craves.

There’s a suggestion that Antonella could also be a figment of Riccardino’s creativeness: we solely hear Riccardino’s facet of the dialog when he talks to her on the cellphone and it’s by no means fully clear how he manages to liberate her from the clinic the place she is being handled. But, regardless of some vagueness within the plotting, My Birthday retains its emotional grip as Riccardino faces his large birthday and what maturity would possibly require of him.