THE STORY – A man spends peaceful days at the hospital where he’s been for some time: with few worries, responsibilities, or problems, sheltered from everything and everyone, this seems to him the best way to live. In fact, even though some of his ward mates feel trapped, to the man the hospital guarantees unparalleled freedom. This precious routine flows smoothly until a new patient arrives: she is restless and angry, does not accept anything about being hospitalized, especially the unwritten rules, and only wants to leave as soon as possible. She wants to live properly or die. The man is overwhelmed by her fury and at first tries to defend himself but then decides to welcome something that is incomprehensible to him. This encounter will make him understand that if you truly face up to your heart and emotions, there is no place to hide.
THE CAST – Valerio Mastandrea, Dolores Fonzi, Laura Morante & Lino Musella
THE TEAM – Valerio Mastandrea (Director/Writer) & Enrico Audenino (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 93 Minutes
“Nonostante” (the English title ignores the literal translation of “notwithstanding”) is the second feature from Italian writer-director-star Valerio Mastandrea, here reuniting with Enrico Audenino, who also co-wrote the director’s debut feature, “Ride.” Chosen to open the Orizzonte section of the 2024 Venice Film Festival, it’s a romantic comedy-drama with a vaguely supernatural twist.
The film begins with an immediately charming sequence in which the main character, played by Mastandrea (none of the characters are named), travels through the grounds of a hospital in an imaginative fashion, much as you might expect in a musical, seemingly unnoticed by the various orderlies with whom he is catching rides by jumping on stretchers and so on. He eventually arrives at a hospital room, where a crowd of people are crowded around a bed, visiting a comatose patient. A slow pan then reveals that the man in the coma is, in fact, Mastandrea’s character (referred to in the script as “Him”) and that he is effectively the spirit or spiritual avatar of the unconscious patient, awaiting either death or recovery from the coma.
The rules of the film reveal themselves gradually. “He” can speak to the avatars of other comatose patients, including glamorous, long-standing “Veterana” (Laura Morante) and chatty “Curiosone” (Lino Musella), but is otherwise, to all intents and purposes, a ghost. However, the spirits can leave the hospital, roam around the outside world, and even organize day trips. Things change for “Him” with the arrival of “She” (Argentinian actress Dolores Fonzi), not least because “He” is evicted from his private room and has to share with Curiosone. After some initial romcom-style bickering, “Him” and “She” fall for each other, but tragedy looms one way or the other because if you die, you die. Still, if you come back to life, it’s almost worse than dying because you forget everything that happened in – let’s call it Coma World.
That idea is the film’s most original and exciting element because it goes against everything we’re taught to expect from real-life and hospital-based dramas about coma patients – the idea that coming back to life might be a terrible thing. The only problem is that, having done such a terrific job of the set-up, emotionally speaking, the film instead stumbles in the delivery, immediately following what should have been a huge, powerfully moving sequence with another equally significant moment that roughly shoves it aside, instead of allowing it to sink in and achieve its full effect.
Mastandrea (an established actor with Italian audiences) is terrific in the lead role, effusing a world-weary, hangdog charm that’s reminiscent of French actor Vincent Lindon. The film plays beautifully on his somewhat cynical and detached screen persona, and the script centers on him coming to appreciate “life,” or at least the life he now has with the people around him and even the possibility of love. Fonzi is equally good as “She.” She makes the most of her own compelling character arc, as she’s initially in denial about Coma World and what it represents. Accordingly, as well as the central love story, she has her own subplot about the acceptance of circumstances, whether those circumstances ultimately result in death or life (and forgetfulness). The supporting cast is terrific, too, particularly Musella, who’s a likeable, garrulous presence, and Morante, who makes the most of her scenes as “Veterana.” There’s also strong comic support from Giorgio Montanini as a living singer, paid to sing to coma patients, who is also able to communicate with them for some poorly explained reason.
Mastandrea has a strong command of tone as a director, moving effortlessly between poignant melancholy, touching romance, and gentle comedy without making any of those transitions seem jarring. He also pulls off some great special effects sequences, all involving a strong wind that apparently occurs whenever anyone is close to death, putting any spiritual entities within its range in danger. At its scariest, the effect evokes the horror trope of an evil entity sucking its victims quickly offscreen (like in “[REC]”). Still, it also results in characters flying through the air, like “Mary Poppins” or similar.
“Nonostante” is further heightened by a superb score from Icelandic composer Toti Gudnason (“Lamb“) that encompasses all the tonal shifts and some striking cinematography from Guido Michelotti, whose lighting choices go a long way toward selling the hospital location as a place of comfort and peace, and who also has an eye for an impressive drone shot. It closes with an acutely personal touch, as Mastandrea dedicates it to the memory of his father, Alberto Mastandrea (1950-2014), which lends an extra degree of poignancy to a deliberately underplayed earlier scene. Overall, thanks to its performances and emotionally engaging story, despite its misstep in the third act, “Nonostante” is a strong opener for this year’s Venice International Film Festival.
