THE STORY – Davide, a thirty-something bookseller, spends his days selling second-hand books in a Roman square. His most devoted customer, Elsa, is also his closest ally: she keeps him supplied with used books and surrounds him with warmth and affection. Then, on what begins as an ordinary day, everything changes. A young boy from North Africa is suddenly thrust into Davide’s care, as though he were a parcel delivered on the street. Silent and unwavering, the child follows him everywhere, like a loyal puppy.
THE CAST – Alessandro Borghi, Valeria Golino, Beidja Yahiaoui, Ramzi Lafrindi, Gabriel Bovino & Valerio Mastandrea
THE TEAM – Gianni Amelio (Director/Writer) and Davide Serino & Andrea Quetti (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 96 Minutes
A longtime darling of socially-engaged Italian cinema (as of this writing, he remains the second-to-last Italian director to have won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, for 1998’s “The Way We Laughed”), Gianni Amelio is generally agreed to have struggled artistically in recent years, at least as far as the critical consensus among his fellow countrymen is concerned (2013’s “Intrepido: A Lonely Hero” is commonly regarded as the beginning of the downward spiral). “No Pain”, which premiered at Venice (though not in competition, which already suggests a lot), doesn’t do much to buck this trend, as it wears its heart on its sleeve but in a very clumsy manner, at times drowning in the worst clichés of well-intentioned dramas trying to deal with weighty topics.
Reuniting with his “Battlefield” star Alessandro Borghi, Amelio casts him as Davide, a lonely bookseller who operates out of a public square in Rome, where he struggles to attract much of a clientele (in the opening scene, he’s on the verge of giving a book away for free, only for the prospective customer to take personal offense at the suggestion). He interacts mainly with a teacher (Valeria Golino), who supplies him regularly with second-hand tomes. One day, he is approached by an immigrant (Ramzi Lafrindi) who tries to leave a young boy (Gabriel Bovino) in his care, having instructed the child to treat the Italian man as his father; the boy follows Davide around, until an accident places him in intensive care. Having witnessed the event, Davide feels guilty, and this colors his subsequent encounter with another stranger: a young woman (Beidja Yahiaoui) who has just arrived from Algeria and is in need of a place to stay. He takes her in, and things get increasingly bizarre from then on.
In addition to Borghi and Golino, Valerio Mastandrea rounds out the main Italian cast as a morgue employee who is the single most compelling element of the film: Mastandrea has a penchant for biting sarcasm and/or stone-faced remarks that elicit laughs through their bluntness, and he’s no different here when his character explains the ins and outs of cremation as matter-of-factly as possible, killing any poetic connotations the practice may have for those who wish to preserve a connection with their loved ones. It’s a slightly paradoxical scene – a soulful performance from an actor embodying a person who isn’t very soulful – in the context of a movie that appears to be aiming for some kind of lyricism in other sections (particularly the tonally misjudged finale), but it’s also indicative of the great confusion that is at play over the course of the film’s hour-and-a-half runtime. What Amelio is aiming for – a story of human connections tied to his own take on the worldwide migratory crisis – is pretty clear, but how he achieves it is a thornier, more muddled question.
The storyline concerning Davide’s houseguest is the weirdest one in that regard: on the one hand, it provides some of the film’s more sincere moments, primarily through the emotionally honest performances (all the non-Italian actors are quite naturalistic, and receive “Introducing” credits); on the other, it leads to a frankly baffling moment where Borghi starts shouting lines that come dangerously close to far-right rhetoric and derail the rest of the movie beyond repair. The charitable assumption is that scene is racially naïve, given the film shows no outward signs of aligning with any anti-migrant mindset. Still, it does no favors to what is already a work that never quite knows exactly what it wants to be.
There are inklings of a more cohesive, interesting story in specific moments, and the same goes for the strand dealing with Davide’s profession and the value of books, a plotline that would have been deserving of its own movie, separate from the migration musings. In their current form, smushed together in occasionally inelegant ways, neither component is strong enough, although it’s worth pointing out the main visual crossover of the two is one of the rare truly remarkable shots in an otherwise subdued picture that is too quiet even when it tries to reach certain thematic and emotional heights. Then again, given what happens when the lead actor does go big, perhaps it’s for the best.
