"El paraíso', a complicated mother-son relationship in a film that leaves no one indifferent
New releases include Enrico Maria Artale's feature film starring Edoardo Pesce
3' min read
3' min read
It was one of the surprises of the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival 2023 and is now finally arriving in our cinemas: it is 'El paraíso', the second feature by Enrico Maria Artale, a director who made his debut in 2013 with 'The Third Time'.
The protagonist is Edoardo Pesce as Julio, a man in his late forties who still lives with his mother, a Colombian woman with a compelling personality.
The two share practically everything: a small house on the river full of memories, the little money they earn working for a local drug dealer, their passion for salsa and merengue nights. An existence on the margins lived with love, at the same time symbiotic and oppressive, whose precarious equilibrium threatens to go into crisis with the arrival of Ines, a young Colombian woman, herself involved in the drug trafficking market.
"This film is a love story between a mother and a son, a colourful tragedy that plunges its heroes into the changing shades of their innermost moods, into delicacy and violence": with these words Enrico Maria Artale accompanied his work in Venice, focusing precisely on the complicated relationship between the two protagonists, torn between affection and suffering, complicity and jealousy.
The conflict will lead the son to an extreme choice, with the intention of going to his homeland for the first time, searching for the kind of 'lost paradise' his mother often told him about.
