In Italy and most of Europe Mario Martone is well known and highly regarded as a director, screenwriter and producer who first rose to prominence in the theater world. He formed Falso Movimento, his first theater company, in 1979 and made his debut as a director of operas in 1989 with the world premier of Lorenzo Ferrero’s Charlotte Corday. However, it was in the 1990s that Martone emerged as one of the leading film directors of the new wave of Neopolitan cinema that produced such major talents as Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo. Martone is still relatively unknown in the U.S. but his 2022 feature Nostalgia garnered critical acclaim on the art house circuit and continued Martone’s fascination with the city of Naples, where he was born in 1959. Based on a novel by Ermanno Rea, the film is a slow burn character study of Felice Lasco, an expatriate living in Cairo, Egypt, who returns to his childhood home of Naples after a 40-year hiatus.
One of the reasons Felice (Pierfrancesco Favino) has returned is to see his mother (Aurora Quattrocchi) before she dies. Now frail and almost blind, she is living in near poverty after having her family home sold to strangers. Felice sets out to find his mother a safer, more attractive living space now that he can afford it (he runs a successful construction business in Cairo). There is also another reason for Felice’s return to Rione Sanita, a neighborhood in Naples that has been abandoned by city officials and is now run by criminal gangs. He wants to see his former childhood friend, Oreste (Tommaso Ragno), whom he abandoned after a traumatic incident when he was fifteen years old.
For the two thirds of Nostalgia, Felice remains a man of mystery whose past is slowly revealed in scattered flashbacks (shot in super 16mm) as he cares for his mother, reconnects with an elderly neighbor, Raffaele (Nello Mascia), and initiates a friendship with Don Luigi (Francesco Di Leva), a local priest who is dedicated to helping his poor but needy congregation.
The final third of Martone’s film takes on a darker tone as Oreste is revealed to be a dangerous crime boss who preys on the locals and delivers anonymous warnings to Felice to leave the city for good. That’s a problem for Felice because he wants to meet his old friend face to face for some kind of closure with the past. He also rediscovers his love for Naples and embraces it like someone who lost their identity but now seeks a return to their roots. Think of it as a Neopolitan version of the Russian fable, The Scorpion and the Frog, and you’ll have some idea of where Nostalgia is headed.
The Naples that Martone depicts on the screen is not the colorful, picturesque city glimpsed in such romanticized Hollywood fare as It Started in Naples (1960) with Sophia Loren and Clark Gable and the Julie Roberts vehicle, Eat Pray Love (2010). Nostalgia offers a rarely seen view of the city that explores the back alleys and side streets of a lower working class slum while also offering glimpses of an often overlooked tourist attraction – the catacombs of San Gennaro. But the rundown homes and apartments of the residents reflect a struggling economy so it’s no wonder that many younger people turn to crime for monetary reasons. Felice himself was drawn into that world by his friend Oreste but managed to escape and build a new life for himself in another country.
Although Naples functions as a major character in Martone’s film, the heart and soul of Nostalgia is Pierfrancesco Favino’s performance as Felice. As naïve and fearless as he is in his exploration of his old neighborhood, he also becomes determined to reestablish himself in Rione Sanita; he even makes plans to buy a home there and sends his wife a plane ticket to join him.
The early scenes in the film are the most touching, especially his interactions with his elderly mother. The sequence where he tenderly bathes her despite her objections reveals a side of him few people see and his burgeoning friendship with Don Luigi demonstrates his new found commitment to the community. But in the end Nostalgia becomes a portrait of two strong personalities: one who has long ago discovered his true nature and embraced it and one who is still in the process of becoming his true self. The ending may be downbeat and abrupt but it all feels fated from the start.
In an interview with Martone at Curzon.com, the director discusses his feelings about Naples: “It’s the south that has a very fatalistic vision of life and of [existence], which is so different to the predominant one in Northern Europe. At times in the south you have this feeling that the whole world is collapsing upon you and that it’s impossible to change things. Yet its tenacity – an ability to maintain ancient traditions – is also life-affirming. Naples just cannot become a normal city and so many people are in pain, condemning themselves. But I find there’s something very beautiful in this will not to transform.”
Martone’s intense interest in Naples has been a recurring theme throughout his filmography starting with his first theatrical feature Death of a Neopolitan Mathematician (1992) starring Carlo Cecchi as a professor in Naples with mental health issues. Other films set in his birth city include L’amore Molesto (English title: Troubling Love, 1995), Martone’s adaptation of Neopolitan writer Elena Ferrante’s debut novel, Rehearsals for War (1998), and The Mayor of Riona Sanita (2019).
As for Pierfrancesco Favino, the actor (a native of Rome) has become one of the most versatile and acclaimed artists of his generation. He started as an actor for Italian television in the early 1990s and moved into films a few years later scoring his first breakthrough success in 2002 with El Alamein – The Line of Fire, a WW2 drama. His acclaimed performances in such Italian films as Le Chiavi di Casa (English title: The Keys to the House, 2004) and Romanzo Criminale (2205) attracted the attention of Hollywood and he has since appeared in several high profile box office hits such as Night at the Museum (2006), where he played Christopher Columbus, Angels & Demons (2009) co-starring Tom Hanks, and the zombie thriller World War Z (2013).
Favino is also unforgettable in a supporting role in Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy (2012) but Nostalgia might be Favino’s finest work to date and it is also a high point in Martone’s career. The film was nominated for the Palm d’Or at Cannes and has received numerous Best Director and Best Actor nominations from international film festivals in Lisbon, Calgary, Palm Springs and other locations.
Guy Lodge of Variety wrote “Martone’s latest feels both inviting and convincingly inhabited, a siren song to the past that confronts us with a violent, unromantic present, paved under with the same old, blood-washed cobblestones.” And Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian stated, “Nostalgia is tremendously shot, and terrifically acted by Favino. It challenges the idea of “nostalgia” as broadcast in the title: it isn’t simply that nostalgia is delusional, or that the past wasn’t as great as it appears when viewed through rose-tinted spectacles. It is that there is no past and present. Naples then and Naples now are the same – and for Felice his fears and loves never really went away or even changed that much. A strong, deeply felt, valuable movie.”
Nostalgia, not to be confused with the 2018 Jon Hamm drama of the same name or Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia (1983), is not currently available on any format in the U.S. although you might be able to purchase Blu-ray or DVD copies of the film from international sellers (if you own an all-region player). You can also stream it on Kanopy.
Other links of interest:
https://www.operadeparis.fr/en/artists/mario-martone
https://www.curzon.com/journal/mario-martone-on-nostalgia-naples-and-narrative/
https://variety.com/2022/film/news/mario-martone-nostalgia-naples-1235277134/
https://cineuropa.org/en/interview/426076/
https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2024/meet-pierfrancesco-favino-feature-film-jury-member/
Cinema Sojourns 