Riccardo Scamarcio has remained one of my favorite international actors creating terrifically nuanced characters for over two decades in films as diverse as Fausto Paravidino’s Texas and Michele Placido’s Romanzo Criminale in 2005. He played a repressed gay man Ferzan Özpetek’s Loose Cannons (Mine vaganti) in 2010, showed off his comic chops in Woody Allen’s underrated gem, To Rome with Love in 2012 and embodied the iconic actor Ninetto Davoli in Abel Ferrara’s biodrama Pasolini in 2014. In 2023 he shined as Hercule Poirot’s bodyguard in Kenneth Branagh’s engaging, A Haunting in Venice. I could go on.
Suffice to say, he’s quite diverse in his choices and always delivers fascinating portrayals.
But his remarkable work in Tommaso Landucci’s evocative and deeply penetrating feature debut, Children of the Monkey (I figlie delle schimmia), may very well be his best onscreen performance to date.
Scamarcio plays Dario, the loving and doting father of a disabled young boy, Enri (Andrea Aggio) who also has a terrific relationship with his teen nephew Giacomo (Tancredi Naldini). As his bond with Giacomo deepens, he finds himself growing further apart from his actual son as well as his wife (Lidiya Liberman). Past resentments between himself, his brother (Fausto Russo Alesi) and his father (Luigi Diberti) rear their ugly heads, and Dario must confront the painful truth that Giacomo might be the son he always wished for. How can he reconcile this difficult truth?
In a particularly telling and compelling scene that takes place between the two brothers in a car, the lines between Dario’s feelings for his son and his nephew truly blur.
Dario’s time with Giacomo, teaching him to ride a motorcycle and then going biking with him, is also a great return to his lost youth.
Landucci never lets the viewer off easy, showing just how difficult the life of parent who has a child with this kind of debilitating disability can be, but also letting us soak in the pleasure of having such a sweet and loving child like Enri.
The director wisely relies heavily on close-ups of Dario to show us what he’s experiencing and the anguish, sorrow, joy and elation he is feeling—sometimes all in the same moment. Scamarcio etches a keen and deeply affecting portrait of an emotionally shattered soul.
Aggio is truly remarkable. It’s impossible not to fall in love with him. Aggio lives with the same disability as his character, tetraplegia (the loss or dysfunction of motor and/or sensory function in the cervical area of the spinal cord, that can present as paralysis).
Newcomer Naldini is quite the find, giving us an authentic look at a post-pubescent teen at quite a few crossroads.
I did wish there was just a little bit more meat to the deliberately economic screenplay (by Landucci and Damiano Femfert) but the actors fill in the empty spaces nicely.
The film is curiously shot in the near-square 1:31:1 aspect ratio.
Interesting to note that Oscar-winning director James Ivory (A Room with a View, Howard’s End, The Remains of the Day) is an executive producers on the film.
Children of the Monkey (I figlie delle schimmia) is part of the Horizons (Orizzonti) section of the Venice Film Festival.
In Italian, with English subtitles.
