The Son's Room

The Son's Room

The Son's Room

This is a great movie. You feel the pain that parents feel when they loose their only son. How the events that led to the death just play over and over in your mind. I don't think I have cried more in any other movie. If you are tired of the regular block buster movies and are ready for something original then this is it.

This film is strikingly simple but surprisingly powerful. Dealing with the lives of a perfect Italian family who must struggle to come to their son's sudden death, it is both a moving and truthful account of their attempts to come to terms with their grief. The performances are uniformly superb - especially the daughter, who is so convincingly heartbroken by her brother's death that you cannot help but imagine them to be really related. This is not to downplay the parents however who are utterly believable and charming. The pace of the film is also excellently judged, maintaining the same steady candour both before and after the accident. For what it is, and it has no pretensions to be anything else, I would say the film is almost flawless and one cannot help being deeply moved by the power of both the situation and the acting.

The Son's Room is one of those movies you would have trouble describing to your friends. The premise is simple enough: a family learns to deal with the tragic son of a teenage boy. Yet the movie's beauty is in its simplicity. Tragedies seldom occur with fanfare and the death of a loved one is even more quiet and painful. The characters don't overact and the grief is just under the surface. The movie contrasts their everyday lives before and after the tragedy. As you watch the story, you feel that lump in your throat that won't go away. Both Moreti and Morante give award-deserving performances as ordinary parents/spouses going through an extraordinary time.

This is a truly excellent film. Real emotions are shown and explored rather than just exploited. The result is a tearjerker in the most honest sense. Do yourself a favor and see this film, which features deep, emotional performances from terrific actors all around (Mr. Moretti and Ms. Morante are truly special), and which brings you to a place of hope which is not at all contrived.

Amazing! Moretti delivers one of his best movies. It's a shame many people especially in North America won't get to see it or understand it. I'm sick of the Woody Allen lookalike comments. They have nothing in common. Finally the Cannes Festival gave him the prize. Great cast for the movie and Laura Morante proves to be one of the best italian actresses and certainly a most beautiful woman. I recommend all the other Moretti movies for a better look of the changes in Italy from an intelligent and cynical point of view.

Thank you Nanni Moretti for such a touching human experience. At no point during this emotionally powerful film did I feel manipulated like most Hollywood productions dealing with sensitive issues try to do. Completely human, very sad, yet no totally depressing, with a faint but nevertheless shining ray of hope.

When a movie is great, it is clear to everyone. When a movie is perfect, like this, it may appear unclear to some viewers. Nanni Moretti' s cinema is the quality cinema par excellence. La stanza del figlio touches subjects as a son's death with a sense of delicacy that is hard to believe. The acting is superb (especially Nanni Moretti and Morante, a good start for debutant Jasmine Trinca), editing is astonishing, music moments equilibrated and wonderful, and the movie itself is so dense of emotive power, elegance and style. I do not expect this film to be appreciated in USA as it did in Europe, as this film is really " european "(no gratuitous happy ends for example...), but real connoisseurs of cinema will surely recognize in this a great piece of art. The Cannes prize is fully deserved, in spite of some angry comments from someone, obviously green of envy.

Deep and touching, Moretti has master-crafted a film which transcends sentimentality in spite of its well trodden subject matter. One of his best accomplishments.