Sulla terra leggeri Review

Sulla terra leggeri / Weightless (2024) Film Review from the 77th Annual Locarno Film Festival, a movie directed by Sara Fgaier, written by Sabrina Cusano, Sara Fgaier and Maurizio Buquicchio and starring Andrea Renzi, Lise Lomi, Stefano Rossi Giordani, Amira Chebli, Maria Fernanda Candido, Emilio Scarpa and Sara Serraiocco.

Sulla terra leggeri, directed by Sara Fgaier, offers viewers a leisurely paced but thought-provoking look inside the life of an older professor named Gian (Andrea Renzi) whose memories of the past seem to have become tarnished. His students look at him oddly as he takes an unconventional approach to instruction at a lecture. Struggling with the loss of the love of his life who has passed away, Gian is given a diary of the past which he begins to look through. Fgaier’s film is not told in a straightforward fashion. It is very abstract and metaphorical. We examine the past life of Gian through flashbacks that show the complexities of the life in which he lived. Sara Serraiocco plays Gian’s daughter, Miriam, who helps open up the idea of the father looking back at his life history to discover who he truly is.

This film plays with the idea of life as a lengthy journey which is complicated and full of very deep emotions. This movie reminded me of a recent film called Touch which is about a man looking back at the history of his past love on a journey to reunite with her.  Sulla terra leggeri charts a similar course. Emilio Scarpa plays Gian when he was a young man who fell for an aviator named Leila (the superb Lise Lomi). The two would-be lovers have a good rapport but a series of events threatens to separate them and circumstances begin to put a road block in the way of their romance.

When the picture plays the popular song, “Crimson and Clover,” Gian is interacting with an artsy type who is a potential romantic partner for him that may be just what he’s looking for to complement his life desires. That may not work out too well but the use of the song is effective nevertheless. There are also scenes that feel like Gian is traveling through time in his thoughts and in his memories and these parts of the movie are intriguingly done. They remind us of the long journey that Gian has embarked on over the course of his life.

There is an element in the picture which was a turn off where Gian aggressively handles a cat and then demands that his daughter get a syringe in order to help save the feline. Without getting too much into specifics, the scene felt a little heavy-handed yet represented the turmoil Gian is experiencing and how he takes his aggression out in an unnecessary fashion.

Director Sara Fgaier does a better job with the romantic aspects of the relationship between the young Gian and Leila than with the detailed modern story of Gian overcoming his current obstacles. Scarpa and Lomi created a deep, passionate relationship on-screen that has more going on than Gian’s modern day story. There’s passion in the love story but a lack of sufficient subtlety in the modern scenes with Gian and his daughter. While the movie delves deep into the past to show the effects of the passage of time, the love story overcomes the more ambiguous efforts the movie takes on in some of its other scenes.

Andrea Renzi gives an intense performance that one can juxtapose to Scarpa’s turn as Gian’s more passionate younger self. Sara Serraiocco is good at times but her performance feels lacking in terms of genuine passion. It seems Miriam has suppressed much of the joy in her life in order to care for her dad. This film is very multi-layered but needed a bit more emotions integrated into the modern day sequences to be fully effective. As it plays now, it feels like the actions here in the present are somewhat stilted at times.

Sulla terra leggeri knows how to present a well-constructed love story. Whereas Touch had the benefit of a lead character who remembered things about his past love better than Gian, it’s unfair to compare the two films but they both tread on similar ground. Both films reach a conclusion where it is decided that true love is worth remembering even in the event of aging.

In the final analysis, there are some well-done scenes in Sulla terra leggeri but there are also some parts of the movie that feel unnecessarily overwritten and depressing. If you focus on the love story here, there’s a better take-away than that from the other sequences here. If Fgaier’s film carries a lot of weight on its shoulders, it’s because the picture is overly ambitious. While ambition counts for a lot, execution counts for more.

Rating: 6.5/10

Leave your thoughts on this Sulla terra leggeri review and the film below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook‘s patrons. Readers seeking more Locarno Film Festival news can visit our Locarno Film Festival Page, our Film Festival Page, and our Film Festival Facebook Page.

Readers seeking more film reviews can visit our Movie Review Page, our Movie Review Twitter Page, and our Movie Review Facebook Page.

Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Mobile App, Google News, Feedly, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, Telegram, Mastodon, Flipboard, and Threads.