Nanni Moretti’s deeply personal Palme D’Or winner, THE SON’S ROOM, looks at family tragedy
THE SON’S ROOM (LA STANZA DEL FIGLIO) (Nanni Moretti, 2001)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, December 5, and Thursday, December 17, 4:00
Series runs December 4-18
Tickets: $12, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
Winner of the Palme D’Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, The Son’s Room is a moving look at life, love, and loss. Italian writer-director-actor Nanni Moretti stars as Giovanni, a psychiatrist who can’t control the dissolution of his family following a terrible tragedy. Moretti (Caro Diario, Ecce Bombo) has made a heart-wrenching work that will always be compared with Todd Field’s powerful In the Bedroom, which came out the same year. Both films examine family tragedy with honesty and believability, but whereas the family in In the Bedroom considers revenge, the father in The Son’s Room, achingly played by Moretti, can’t get over wrongly blaming himself, while his wife (Laura Morante, who won the Best Actress award at Cannes for the role) seeks solace in her son’s girlfriend (Sofia Vigliar), whom she had not known about. Moretti is a deeply personal filmmaker; at times you will feel like you are watching a documentary, and it will break your heart. The Son’s Room is screening December 5 & 17 as part of the MoMA series “Italian Film, 21st-Century Style: A Tribute to Rai Cinema,” comprising ten films from the last fifteen years released by the Italian studio. Other films in the two-week retrospective are Matteo Garrone’s Il Racconto dei racconti (Tale of Tales) and Gomorra, Marco Bellocchio’s Buongiorno, notte (Good Morning, Night), the Taviani brothers’ Cesare deve morire (Caesar Must Die), and Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro GRA.