THE STORY – Years after leaving Naples behind, Antonio has built a successful life in Milan, far from his mother Angela – an irresistible, old-fashioned woman, excessive in every way and fiercely antagonistic. When she arrives for Christmas seemingly intending never to leave, Christmas Eve dinner becomes an emotional battlefield, both comic and savage, exposing years of resentment and misunderstanding.
THE CAST – Vanessa Scalera, Lino Musella, Elena Radonicich, Ivana Lotito, Nicole Malaj, Samuele Mazza, Tony Laudadio & Tommaso Ragno
THE TEAM – Edoardo De Angelis (Director/Writer) & Francesco Piccolo and Ilaria Macchia (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 94 Minutes
Adapted from the novel “Il fuoco che ti porti dentro” by Antonio Franchini, “The Fire Within You” is the latest film from Italian director Edoardo De Angelis (“Comandante”). Largely confined to a single location, it’s an intense family drama that’s sure to ruffle a few feathers. Set on Christmas Eve, the film stars Lino Musella as Antonio, a literary editor who lives in Milan with his wife Benedetta (Elena Radonicich) and their teenage children Valentina (Nicole Malaj) and Andrea (Samuele Mazza), partly to be as far away from his mother – Naples native Angela (Vanessa Scalera) – as possible. However, seeing as it’s Christmas, the family – including Antonio’s sister Paola (Ivana Lotito) – gather for dinner and sure enough, as soon as Angela walks through the door, the airing of the grievances begins.
Angela’s spewing of poison and hatred is seemingly never-ending, belittling Antonio for his career choices (and implicitly for leaving her in the first place), lambasting dancer Andrea for claiming they are gender-fluid, criticising Paola’s late-arriving Buddhist husband Eduardo (Tony Laudadio), slagging off absent daughter Enrica, and even yelling out the window at the neighbors for good measure. The arrival of an important author (Tommaso Ragno as Giulio Simonetti) briefly stops the flow of hate as she flirts with him a little, but she’s soon back to making everyone’s life a misery, and as tempers rise, a confrontation seems inevitable.
Confining the action to a single location risks making the film seem stagey (if you didn’t know better, you’d swear it was based on a play), but the pay-off is an atmosphere of palpable claustrophobia, heightened by De Angelis’ direction, which favors close-ups of each actor and very few long shots. As the exchanges become more and more heated and venomous, the audience is put in the position of the supporting characters, desperate to escape Angela’s vicious invective. Fortunately, De Angelis injects some much needed moments of black comedy, the highlights of which include an oblivious Eduardo arriving late, tucking into the food and announcing, “I feel good energy here. Have you all had a good time?” There’s also a superb running joke involving a live chicken that’s meant to be their dinner, except it keeps escaping or being rescued by Valentina, who’s a vegetarian.
In addition to its symbolic value, the chicken (technically a capon, as the script points out more than once) turns out to be a great source of comedy, whether with a beautifully timed reaction shot or, in the film’s best throwaway moment, receiving a tarot reading from Valentina, where the cards reveal its fate. De Angelis clearly loves his feathered co-star too, as he favors it with several great close-ups, one of which has it practically pecking the camera.
The actors are impressive across the board, but this is clearly Scalera’s show. Accordingly, she delivers a tour de force performance, lashing out at the world around her and saying ever more outrageous things. Her key scene occurs when the title is referenced, with Angela declaring that she feels a fire burning within her, a lead-in to the film’s most shocking moment. The supporting cast is equally good. Musella is superb as the long-suffering son (he has a permanently miserable-looking face, which works well), but as Benedetta points out, Antonio has a fire within him too. Part of the film’s tension lies in the audience waiting for that fire to ignite, and when it does, Musella doesn’t disappoint. On top of that, established Italian star Tomasso Ragno (singled out by the credits) is of great value as Giulio, particularly when he starts flirting with Angela, or joining in when she sings a song in a rare non-miserable moment. Similarly, there is strong work from Lotito, who radiates a natural warmth as Paola and has some great lines.
On that note, the dialogue is frequently entertaining. Aside from all of Angela’s jaw-droppingly outrageous lines, there’s a lovely moment where Antonio and Paola are bonding over some of their mother’s frequent sayings, such as “Life is just thighs opening and a coffin closing” and “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity – I screw you and you screw me”. The dialogue is also interesting in that it reveals how each of the different characters has their own different way of dealing with Angela. For example, Andrea (who is basically Gen Z personified) isn’t bothered by her comments and deliberately winds her up, while Benedetta relies on platitudes delivered through evidently gritted teeth, while Antonio all too often rises to her bait. Meanwhile, Valentina disengages completely, preferring to hide in her room and talk to the chicken rather than engage with her hateful grandma.
If there’s a problem with the film, it’s only that the climax feels both overly familiar and underwhelming. The worst thing Angela can say to Antonio turns out to be something that we’ve heard before in a million other family dramas, so there’s a lingering sense of “Is that it?’” and the film ultimately promises more than it delivers. On top of that, the climax feels rushed and key moments are underdeveloped (it actually feels like scenes are missing), leading to a sense of missed opportunity, as well as a lack of emotional impact, contrary to expectations. That said, this remains an engaging, briskly directed family drama that should probably come with a trigger warning for anyone with a similarly fraught family dynamic.
