Critique : America Latina – Cineuropa

After the initial shock, Massimo does not release the girl (Sara Ciocca), he does not call the police and he does not warn his wife (Astrid Casali). From that moment on, his life begins to take a strange path. He suspects his only friend (Maurizio Lastrico) but, as he says to the bartender (Filippo Dini), which could well be imaginary, like that of Shining, he suspects himself above all. Does he suffer from amnesia? He keeps a diary and marks with a question mark all the days he does not remember at all. He goes down from time to time to the cellar, to give a drink to this young woman who does not speak, and only laments. He will find his father (Massimo Wertmüller), who lives alone in poverty and despises him (he tells him that he can do nothing but whine). Obviously, it is from this father that the dentist’s lack of self-confidence comes from, perhaps his condition as a psychopath. Massimo begins to swallow all kinds of pills, everything becomes confusing and distorted and his paranoia backfires even on his teenage daughters (Carlotta Gamba and Federica Pala), as they play the piano for him or bake a birthday cake for him. Perhaps they know his secret … In full delirium, he accuses wife and daughters of a set-up, to incriminate him and replace him with a “better father”.

The D’Innocenzo brothers, the most disturbing directors among the new promises of Italian cinema, sign a new episode of their residential suburban Italian Gothic fresco, with small villa and swimming pool (a constant), which they themselves describe as ” a love story, and like all love stories, necessarily a thriller “. They start from an everyday story (the small family in front of the small screen hears about the typical family massacre committed by a father, because it is from television that the monsters appear) to account for the feeling of total inadequacy of the male of the third millennium unable to recognize the social evolution of women, within and outside the family, and to accept sorority.

They formulate this subject in the only way they know, that is to say by making it part of the cinema that they love the most. We therefore have the landscape as an essential element, certain camera movements, tracking shots, a few shots borrowed from this or that filmmaker (the film was shot in 35mm and this time, a lot of work was done on the sound) . Cherry cake could be the mushrooms Clint Eastwood eats in The preys by Don Siegel (remade in the feminine by Sofia Coppola, to which precisely, the D’Innocenzo brothers take again the nightgowns of three women), and the figure of Elio Germano emerging from the infernal cellar could be the Nosferatu by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. And the game could go on for a long time. That the brothers want to play, you can tell even before the start of the film, when you see the Universal slogan whistled, the credits upside down, and even the poster of the film, identical to that of the TV series. Fargo. Their overt cinephilia may seem mannered to many viewers, but it is never ostentatious or gratuitous: it is just the means of establishing a pact with the viewer. And it is a feast for the eyes.

America Latina was produced by The Apartment, Vision Distribution and Le Pacte. Italian distribution and international sales of the film are handled by Vision Distribution.