'Material Love', a sentimental triangle that's half-way exciting

Lucy is played by Dakota Johnson, an actress undoubtedly more on the ball than Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans as Harry and John respectively, characters that are rather bland as are the performances of the two stars who played them.

A few important cues are nonetheless present in the film - starting with that disturbing contemporary drift of so many situations in which human beings are regarded as numerical forms of value - but they are decidedly watered down within a context full of predictable twists and turns and clichés of all sorts.

The frame that sets up a metaphor related to primitive men is very weak: the conclusion, in particular, is not very credible and incapable of touching the deep chords it would have liked to.

The hope is that with her future projects, Celine Song will rediscover the spontaneity and dramaturgical force of her debut, which, it is to be hoped, will not remain an isolated case in her filmography.

In contrast, 'Enzo', a truly anomalous film for many reasons, has been in cinemas since last week.

The reason is quickly stated: the first name to appear as the author of this feature film is that of Laurent Cantet, the director who passed away on 25 April 2024 and who had won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 with 'La classe'.

Cantet had worked on the subject but passed away before it was actually realised, and the project went ahead thanks to Robin Campillo, a close collaborator of Cantet's and himself a director of major titles such as 2017's '120 Beats Per Minute'.

"Enzo" is thus a feature film signed by four hands ("a film by Laurent Cantet made by Robin Campillo") in which, however, it is quite evident that the gaze of the director who actually shot and completed it prevails.

Perhaps echoes of the cinema of Cantet, a director who had also shown his talent in titles such as 'Human Resources' (1999) or 'Full Time' (2001), can be heard in the basis of the narrative, rather than in a direction in which Campillo rightly put his own style.

The protagonist is a teenager in crisis, broken with the bourgeois family he comes from and with whom he can no longer have any form of communication. Rather than follow the ideas inculcated in him by his father, Enzo prefers to work as a bricklayer and is particularly attached to one of his Ukrainian colleagues.

The film starts from an individual story and turns into a universal reflection, capable of depicting youth discomfort as something profoundly generational and always working on opposites: tranquillity and conflict, apparent family serenity and inner disintegration.

The topics are many, so much so that the film ends up putting too much meat on the fire, running the risk of not adequately deepening the many themes.

The cues are important and the realism of the story depicted is very much felt, but there is a lack of real touches that would have made the viewing experience more engaging and original: there are many films that can come to mind when watching this work (e.g. the films of André Téchiné), which does not lack merit in the writing of the characters but which could and should have been much more incisive.

Remarkable, however, is the work of the entire cast and a special mention goes to Pierfrancesco Favino as Enzo's father: his is an intense performance capable of lingering long after the viewing is over.