L'Immensita - International Films - Independent Films

Overview

Clara (Penélope Cruz) and her emotionally distant husband Felice (Vincenzo Amato) relocate to Rome to raise a family. Even though the paint is fresh, and the appliances are new, the crushing expectations around marriage, desire, and gender in the early 1970s remain as traditional as ever. Their children Andrew (played by newcomer Luana Giuliani), Gino, and Diana are likewise poised at a precipice, on the verge of adolescence, with nothing but their imaginations to defuse family tensions. The eldest child, Andrew (nicknamed Adri by his parents), yearns for another life – an outsized, vibrantly-realized vision of a world where he gets to live as the boy he knows himself to be. Without an accepted vocabulary for talking about his transgender identity, Andrew tells adults that he’s an alien from another galaxy and makes a habit of running away to pursue a local Roma girl who accepts his boyhood at face value. As an outsider ostracized for her own eccentricities, Clara instinctively strives to protect her son despite not fully understanding him. An effortlessly moving film about growing up, fitting in, and breaking the mold, L’immensita is as freewheeling and creative as its central characters, mixing genres and staging musical numbers out of thin air.

Reactions, Awards & Festivals

Official Selection

Venice Film Festival, 2022

“Everything in “L’Immensità” is beautiful even when everything wasn’t: Crialese’s odd, affecting memory piece layers the world as it was, is and could be in the same gilded frame.”

Guy Lodge

Variety

"a story of quiet desperation and secret yearning in the hearts of teens and the middle-aged alike”

Peter Bradshaw

The Guardian

"There is a visceral, cheesy thrill in seeing Penelope Cruz playing a go-go girl while Adri lip-syncs to Italian television’s answer to Johnny Cash.”

Stephanie Bunbury

Deadline

Cast & Crew