Director Emanuele Crialese draws on his own childhood growing up as a trans boy in 1970s Rome for this beautifully affirming portrait of a boy's relationship with his mother (Penélope Cruz).
There is a certain beauty of childhood that many filmmakers struggle to materialize onscreen. To be a child is to exist inside a world within a world, one governed by its own forms and rituals as well as the vastness and curiosity of the unknown. Certainly, the autonomy to be found in childhood largely exists in the margins: in hidden spaces of play and conflict and in working around and through the guiding words of adults and caregivers.
Andrew is quiet but ever observant, and his experience of youth is inextricable from the navigation of his own gender. Referred to as Adri by the rest of his family, Andrew often draws the fury of his short-tempered father, a philandering and abusive businessman who struggles to understand his child’s refusal of gendered expectations with any sort of grace or care. His is a deeply flawed model of masculinity that diverges from Andrew’s own exploration of gender in every way possible.
Clara, a Spanish expat, is Andrew’s refuge. While, like Andrew, she lacks the vocabulary to support her son, there is a carefree joy and sense of play that she brings to the world around her that opens up a space for him to exist within. It’s a kind of maternal compassion that tries its best to refuse judgment, even if its boundaries and limitations are as confusing as they are relatively safer.
Buoyed by strong performances from both Cruz and newcomer Giuliani, “L’immensità” patterns its dramatics with musical sequences as imagined by Andrew. Full of feeling and nostalgia for 1970s Italian pop culture, these homages see mother and son in starring roles, finally able to fully shake free of the limitations they both endure.
While perhaps not the strongest entry in Crialese’s filmography, “L’immensità” certainly gives life to a beautifully affirming mother-son relationship that endures onscreen. A love letter to its characters and their real-life counterparts, the film is, above all, a witness to the kind of expansive love and kinship that is formed in the margins but nonetheless expansive in its imaginings of the world.
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