A review of the new Italian film “Nostalgia”
My mother was from Naples and took us there twice as children, so the city has a special place in my heart. Naturally, therefore, I was attracted to this 2022 Italian film, co-written and directed by Mario Martone and based on a 2016 novel, which is shot mainly in the impoverished Rione Sanità district of Naples.The cinematography is simply wonderful and captures brilliantly the atmosphere of this urban slice of comradeship and corruption. Felice (Pierfrancesco Favino) is nostalgic for the friendship that he had with Oreste (Tommaso Ragno) some 40 years ago, before he left the city to make a new life in Egypt, but revisiting his past is going to have huge consequences for his present.
There are so many magical scenes in this moving work but, for me, the most touching was when Felice reconnects with his aged mother and bathes her with gentleness and love.