Founded in 2004, the Giornate degli Autori (Venice Days) is an independent section of the Venice Film Festival intended to highlight the work of independent, auteur-driven cinema. Contrasting with the star-studded premieres that characterize much of the festival’s offerings, over the years the Giornate has featured work from an impressively diverse range of talented filmmakers from Sarah Polley to Hiam Abbas to Josh and Benny Safdie. Among this year’s competitors is Labirinti, a Calabrian coming-of-age tale from director Giulio Donato in his feature film debut.
Opening on the sun-drenched hills of their small town on the day of the Feast of Saint Francesco da Paola, the film finds the young Fra and Mimmo giddily zooming around on their bikes, pranking the local bullies, and scavenging for tasty snacks. Innocent of the complicated futures that await them, they are enjoying the kind of carefree summer that feels like it will never end, taking for granted that their friendship is built to last.
Flashing forward some years later, the film catches up with Fra and Mimmo (now played by Francesco Grillo and Simone Iorgi) as teens on the brink of adulthood. Not much has changed, only they’ve now exchanged sweet snacks from mom’s kitchen for beers and smokes on the beach. While Mimmo seems perfectly content flirting with the local girls, laying by the water, and getting up to late night trouble, Fra is restless. When we catch him stealing glances at another young man at the town fair, we start to understand why.
The catalyst for the internal journey Francesco is destined to undertake is a mysterious little book called Labirinti, which he stumbles across while cleaning out a local house with Mimmo. Full of magical imagery and possibility, the book soon infiltrates his subconscious, and Fra begins to have dreams of making his way through a labyrinth, striving for an elusive escape. In the labyrinth Fra encounters a floating ball of mercury which morphs first into the figure of a young woman, and then quickly into the figure of the man he had observed earlier at the fair (played by German musical artist Finn Ronsdorf). Illuminating Fra’s true desires, the forest at the centre of the labyrinth, and its caretaker, provide him a tenuous refuge from the suffocatingly conservative heteronormative culture of his small town.
Predictably, Fra begins to dream of escaping their small town for Rome and the seemingly endless possibilities it has to offer, but Mimmo balks at his ambitions. Mimmo is very happy with the cards life has dealt him, and has no understanding of Fra’s disdain. Unfortunately, despite this relationship being at the centre of the film, the lack of chemistry between Grillo and Iorgi makes it difficult to understand why we should be invested in their continued friendship, or why we should feel any sadness at its dissolution. I simply found myself rooting for Fra to ditch Mimmo and make his Roman dreams happen, which of course he does. Though not before Mimmo shows his true colours when Fra finally finds his voice and declares himself, unashamed, to the town bullies. Good riddance Fra, you’re better off without him anyway.
Labirinti reminds me of another similarly themed film that premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week earlier this year. Like Donato’s current offering, Block Pass is a queer coming-of-age tale characterized by the toxic masculinity of its rural European setting, but thanks to a pair of very strong performances, the friendship at its centre projects a sincere intensity that feels sorely lacking in Labirinti. Sadly, neither the execution of the film’s fantastical devices nor the performances of its leads are able to transcend a script that feels less than fully realized. While Iorgi turns in a capable performance as Mimmo, he failed to make me care about the character. Worse, I never understood why Fra cared about him. Frankly, I wasn’t entirely convinced that he did, which is a pretty big problem for a film centred on their supposedly special bond. In another iteration, the film’s rich and fully inhabited Calabrian setting could have provided fertile ground for a more engaging narrative, but now we shall never know.
Labirinti premieres in competition at the Giornate degli Autori.
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