#ubertopasolini

[regardezmoica]

Nowhere Special - ZFF 2020

Nowhere Special 

[ZFF 2020]

Italy, Romania, UK, 2020

96 Min

Director: Uberto Pasolini

Cast: James Norton, Daniel Lamont, Eileen O'Higgins, Valerie O'Connor, Stella McCusker

A thirty five-year-old window cleaner John, who has dedicated his life to bringing up his son, after the child's mother left them soon after giving birth. When John is given only a few months to live, he attempts to find a new, perfect family for his three-year-old son, determined to shield him from the terrible reality of the situation. Inspired by true events.

How to describe Nowhere Special ? Maybe with Pasolini’s words: “And to me, that says a lot about life and unpredictability and the rejection of the search for perfection. Don't look for perfection in your life, in everybody else's life.  John is looking for a good place, not a special place, not nothing. It's just a place that where the sun will be all right. From the beginning until the end we felt that John and his son Michael really belong to each other. The talent of Daniel Lamont, playing the three-year-old, is impressive and deeply emotional, even the director can gladly confirm: “He becomes Michael and do exactly what he was told without shouting. No, not even once he was told what to say. He was an actor. He said his lines. He understood the character.” 

The on-screen relationship and chemistry between John and Michael is a beautiful off-screen bound, Pasolini adds: “James was fantastically generous towards Daniel, and so he became his best friend. So for Michael to come and work every day, he was going to play with James. And James was helping him on the and he was playing them off the stage. It was very giving. (...) We didn't have to create the relationship of the father and the son in the editing room.”

Nowhere Special is a subtle melodrama where Pasolini had the required distance and decency not to handle the story of this father like no other without too much pathetic, but rather by small details, insisting especially on the daily life of the father/son relationship. Acting performances will not leave you indifferent.

Grade : B+

Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTpxK_Xg6y0