“Freely inspired” by Nicola Lagioia’s true crime novel, Edoardo Gabbriellini’s The City of the Living (La città dei vivi) is a wholly engrossing, truly disturbing sit. It’s also a remarkable piece of cinema.
The Italian was based on an unimaginable, absurd and senseless tragedy that rattled Rome and all of Italy.
I went into the film not knowing ANYTHING about the real events or the movie’s plot, so I was super gut-punched. In a way, I’m glad I little knowledge of the events. The real details and the director’s intent helped me process my feelings of rage, disgust, anguish, horror and hopelessness, afterwards. But during, I was able to appreciate the film on a purely visceral level.
So, I ask that you want to go in fresh, stop reading here.
Or not.
Set in Rome, The City of the Living centers on Luca Varani (Emanuele Maria Di Stefano) a handsome 23-year-old trying to figure out who he is and what he wants. He lives with his adoring, adoptive parents (Valerio Mastrandrea, Simona Senzacqua) and has a devoted girlfriend, Marta (Gaia Merlonghi), who he fights with, breaks up with, makes up with—your typical 20something relationship.
He’s bright but isn’t doing well in school so, much to everyone’s distress, he decides to drop out. Now, he’s broke.
But Luca’s a good kid. In a telling scene where he sees an opportunity to steal a gold necklace off of teen Gianni (Flavio Campagnola), he follows the boy, not so stealthily. Gianni turns around and asks if he’s going to steal his chain. Luca changes his mind and asks Gianni to buy him a hamburger instead, then he gives him pointers on how it’s best to tuck the chain inside his shirt, maybe even wear a hoodie, while the two munch on burgers and fries. Luca’s not cut out for crime, although the boys do decide to ‘dine and dash.’
But he does need money so he can take Marta out to a nice restaurant once in a while. And a chance meeting with Andreas (Andrea Isidori), a sexy if suspect young man, lures him into the world of attending parties with dubious gay men, for pay.
Luca begins to live a double life, one where he eats dinner with his parents, hangs out with his friends and enjoys time with Marta. The other, where he’s a sex worker. And that leads to…his horrific fate.
Gabbriellini calls his film “an interrupted coming-of-age story,” which is quite revealing. The director does not set out to explain or even understand what happens to Luca. He merely presents the story– a fascinating one because of how the tragedy lacks any kind of rational explanation.
Like so many (too many) Italian filmmakers, Gabbriellini seems a bit tentative about exploring the main character’s queer side leaning heavy on his love for his girlfriend and presenting his gay inclinations as a mostly monetary endeavor. We don’t see too much of what he actually does with/for these men. But he isn’t appalled or repulsed by it. The real Luca had allegedly had many sexual encounters with men.
Contrast the lack of real same-sex moments with the number of intimate scenes between Luca and Marta. Suffice to say, it would have been a boon to see a bit more of his conflicting desires.
The director smartly veers away from a gloomy tone, although there is a faint cloud of doom over the narrative, which, rightly, remains an intimate one that keeps focus on the main character’s journey — until the final quarter.
And at the center of this deeply unsettling film is a quiet yet potent performance by Di Stefano. This remarkable young actor imbues Luca with sweet, tender, confused, frustrated, thoughtful, loveable qualities, someone a bit lost but wanting to find his way, battling his own pridefulness and feelings of failure. And holding on to his small but hopeful dreams.
The setting is of supreme importance, the enigmatic, eternal city of Rome, which I, personally, have a tremendous love/hate relationship with. I have had some of the most wonderful and absolutely devastating things happen to me in Rome. It’s a city, to me, that offers so many pleasures and possibilities but can also snatch them away in the blink of an eye – which is what happened to Luca on a most egregious and chilling scale.
One of the most haunting aspects of The City of the Living is how everyone is just one chance meeting away from something monstrous occurring. That one simple meeting or decision to venture somewhere can change your life forever…or destroy it before it’s ever had a chance to blossom.
In Italian, with English subtitles.
