Respiro

France, Italy

2002

95 Min

Color

1.85:1

Italian, Sicilian

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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EXEC Raphaël Berdugo, Anne-Dominique Toussaint

CAST Valeria Golino, Vincenzo Amato, Veronica D'Agostino, Francesco Casisa, Filippo Pucillo, Muzzi Loffredo, Elio Germano

MUSIC Andrea Guerra, John Surman

Cannes (Semaine de la critique): Critics Week Grand Prize, Young Critics Award, AFI FEST (European Showcase), Telluride, Toronto (Contemporary World Cinema), San Francisco, Rotterdam (Main Programme), Karlovy Vary (Forum of Independents)

Synopsis

Thirteen-year-old Pasquale is the head of a small band of children who hunt birds in their spare time, and defend “their” territory from rival gangs. Like most of his fellow Lampedusans, Pasquale spends his evenings on Via Roma, the main street that he and his mates use as a race track for performing acrobatic stunts with their Vespas. Pasquale’s one acknowledged boss is his father, Pietro, a generous but violent man who is both loved and feared. His mother, Grazia, is considered to be extravagant by the rest of her family. She refuses to be dominated, however that is not an advantage in Lampedusa where everyone always keeps an eye on what she’s doing. Pasquale is ashamed of his mother being different from the other mothers, but defends and protects her from the growing pressure from her peers and her husband, as everyone wants to take her to a mental hospital in Milan, where they think she can get cured. –Inbaseline

Director

Emanuele Crialese

Although born in Rome in 1965, Emanuele Crialese has Sicilian roots, to which he pays tribute in film after film. In 1991 he leaves for the USA where he studies film direction at New York University. After making several shorts, he directs his first feature-length movie Once We Were Strangers (1997), in New York. The year was 1997, the film was in English and was awarded several prizes, among which the Valenciennes International Film Festival Award. He then decided to return to his homeland and met international success (both in festivals and art houses) with his first Italian work Respiro (2002), shot on Lampedusa Island in Sicily in 2002, with Vincenzo Amato and Valeria Golino in her most ambitious part to-date. In 2006, his next film Nuovomondo (2006), once again with Vincenzo Amato but without Valeria Golino (Charlotte Gainsbourg was better suited to play an English-speaking emigrant), examined the question of emigration to the States at the beginning of the 20th century, more particularly… read more

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Broken Flowers

26Oct12

Breathless.

Alex

6Oct12

More interested in the atmosphere and the way of life than the plot itself, love the opening and when i thought the end was going to be predictable or mediocre i find that was pretty good, plus, John Surman music is incredible.

zondabez

2May11

No melhor clima marítimo, "Respiro" encadeia-se na linha do 'cinema italiano à beira-mar' - como "Mediterrâneo", de Salvatores (92). Valeria Golino é uma linda mãe de família que precisa administrar uma loucura 'imposta' pela comunidade. Logo o espectador é contagiado pelas belezas humanas e naturais bem fotografadas, e pelas pequenas histórias do cotidiano de pescadores e adolescentes brigões. Vale assistir!

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