'Here we are, stuck by the river'

| Tuesday February 26, 2008 00:00

Dr Giovanni Semmonti (acted by the writer and director, Nanni Morretti) is a Freudian psychiatrist in Genoa. His wife Paola (Laura Morante) works in an art gallery and they have two teenage children.

Andrea (Giusepe Sanfelice) is about 17 and pushing things at the cutting edge of freedom and secrecy with his peers. Semmonti goes jogging in the morning before he opens his medical office to see his patients.

Sometimes his son, Andrea, jogs with him. The daughter, Irene (Jasmine Trinca) is around 16, loves basketball and has a boyfriend Mateo (Allesandro Infusini) who helps her with her studies and wants a kiss when they finish. She is into foolish games when out riding a motor scooter.

The Son's Room begins with a theft of a rare Ammonite fossil from a school. The head calls in Giovanni and the school suspends Andrea as he is suspected of the theft - he hotly denies it.

Paola accepts Andrea's word that he didn't do it, but his father is suspicious. A few days later he admits to his mother that they did steal it, but as a prank to get at the school head who irritates them. But the fossil rock broke by accident and then they were in a quandary over what to do next. 

Over the course of this unusual film we meet and get to know something of more than half a dozen of Dr Semmonti's patients. They demonstrate their anxieties, compulsions, proclivities and obsessions, including their transference to the good doctor, their love of him. It is all in true Freudian style and the good doctor stays aloof and distant, inducing some of his patients, because of the transference, to respond in ire and anger - 'I've been here to see you 460 times, what for? You seem to listen only 20 percent of the time'.

A few of his patients can't face themselves, so they talk instead about their dreams, books they have read, movies they have seen, but not their inner turmoil. One young man is desperate to tell his shrink about every ejaculation he has. A woman sets goals for herself that she will never achieve so that she can remain a failure all the time.

Another denounces the good doctor, 'You are cold  ... you've never understood me'.
The doctor and the father's work are reflected in the harmony on the surface and turmoil beneath. What is a family? How much do they talk to each other? When Andrea dies in a freak accident the doctor is shattered and his family falls apart.

They are not religious, but the daughter calls for a Mass in Andrea's name. Semmonti is guilt ridden, believing that if he had not gone to see Oscar, a suicidal patient on that Sunday morning, his son would not have died. Even though he is a 'trick cyclist' he still can't, irrationally, keep from blaming himself.

Irene becomes belligerent in a basketball match at school, accusing the referee of not calling a foul. She causes a fight between the players and gets suspended from competition. Then a love letter to Andrea arrives from Arianna, a girl they knew nothing about. The last part of this surprising film is consumed by how they should communicate to Arianna, to tell her that Andrea has died.

The process in the beginning divides them even further, but then in totally unexpected ways the mysterious Arianna (Sofia Vigliar) brings them all back together. Andrea had written to Arianna and sent to her prints of photos of himself in his room in their house, The Son's Room. Semmonti  has to be reminded that, 'You can't turn back time'.

This is a very mature film about life and loss. It is surprising both in its soft colours and humane treatment of the subject. It is an unusual film as it confronts its subjects without melodrama or over playing its themes.

The Son's Room is one and 39 minutes long. It is in Italian, with English subtitles. The director is Nanni Morretti. The script is by the director with Linda Ferri and Heidrun Schleef. The cinematographer is Giuseppe Lanci; the editor is Esmeralda Calabria; the music is by Nicola Piovani. It was filmed in Milano at Cine Citte and at Ancona and Genoa. It won the Palme d'Or (the highest honour) at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001. sasa_majuma@yahoo.co.uk