Saturday, November 12, 2011

UNA VITA TRANQUILLA
( A QUIET LIFE)

MovieMov: Italian Cinema Now
Greenbelt 3, Cinema 5



Rosario, an Italian living in Germany owns a successful restaurant/hotel business. He has been living in Germany for 15 years with his German wife, Renate and their young son, Mathias. Soon enough, two visitors from Italy show up and his sordid past catches up with him to interrupt his peaceful existence.

"La Vita Tranquilla" explores the premise of redemption. Is it possible to redeem oneself from a violent past? How long can you keep your past life, a secret?

Apparently for Rosario, 15 years is not long enough. Now he fears that if his past resurfaces, his old personality will too. Rosario knows that his current life is at an end, but he doesn't know why. His mind is so fixated on figuring out if he can cheat death as well as protect his current family from learning about his past. He is too distracted with sorting out his past that he compromises the very existence that cradled him for so long.

Part of the film's success lies in the way it balances contrasting concepts: Family offers both security and betrayal. It is also full of subtle modulations with two different scenes juxtaposed together to create a bigger impact. It is mostly a riveting character study of a marked man's frantic quest to keep his true identify from surfacing to the fore. The pacing of the story is slow, at first. But eventually perks up during the last quarter with an intense go-for-broke situation prevailing with a somewhat tragic and quite sad ending.

No comments: