Adagio

An Italian film set in Rome. The city is burning. There are fires in the woods around it, the air is smoky, and the power keeps failing. Manuel is sixteen. He is asked to go to a party and film someone in secret. The men who ask are police. They want the footage for blackmail. Manuel is frightened and runs. They come after him. He goes to his father. The man is a former criminal whose mind is going; he knows his son, then does not. From there the film is a story of shelter. Manuel is sent to his father's old friends. One is Polniuman. Old, blind, and he does not leave his house. The other is Cammello. Just out of prison and ill. All three are from the same generation. They worked together years ago. There is an old account between them and it was never settled. Now they come together again for a boy. The policeman after them is from that world too. Vasco used to work with them. What the narrative is interested in is not crime but exhaustion: its idea is that a generation is finished and that the men left have neither the strength nor the reasons they had. Manuel is a pretext. The real narrative is the old men's account with each other. The city is inside it. Fire, smoke and darkness throughout. The images are very dark. Most scenes are at night with few sources of light. The tempo is slow. The narrative does not enter action and builds its tension from waiting. This is counted as the last of Stefano Sollima's Rome films; it shares a world with his two earlier ones. Pierfrancesco Favino, Toni Servillo, Valerio Mastandrea, Adriano Giannini and Gianmarco Franchini are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Italian crime cinema and dark atmosphere. Who it is not for: anyone looking for pace; the narrative moves heavily and the young character remains a device to the end.