Avis des critiques

As a first feature, Camilleri demonstrates that he understands storytelling, how to bring out the humanity of his characters, and how to create a sense of community.

"Luzzu" is a moving portrait of a world in flux, and one man attempting to survive the changes thrust upon him by a baffling outside world.

Malta’s views are arresting, but the images Camilleri chooses would never be found in a travel brochure. In his subtle, vérité approach, he captures something special — not one man’s crisis, but a community’s culture.

It’s that non-professional component that ties Camilleri’s filmmaking together: Scicluna’s performance isn’t flashy, but it’s honest, which gives the film much more impact than any faux-grounded affectations would allow. He matches well with his co-stars, but he acts best with the luzzu itself, a character of a sort and a symbol above all else.

Camilleri’s most significant departures from his influences take place on the level of content, but, thankfully, they strain the integrity of the neorealist framework just enough to keep Luzzu fresh, if not revolutionary.

As the cards stack against Jesmark, it is easy to predict where this is going, but Camilleri engagingly and almost magically makes you share the life of fishermen and small people from Malta, the sometimes-secret allure of the place, and the visceral love for fishing – as only somebody from the island could. Luzzu is good cinema, but it’s also a precious document on a way of life which, as it is about to disappear, becomes an image, as Walter Benjamin would say.

In his portrayal of a man at breaking point, trapper-turned-actor Scicluna is mesmerising, resilience and desperation fighting under his rough countenance as he battles with long-ingrained values.

Understated in a way that would make the gods of neorealism proud, the film is anchored by the alluring, underlying rage in Scicluna’s lived-in performance... Camilleri’s writing imbues every scene with great intentionality that feels organic to what the protagonist is undergoing internally, while cinematographer Léo Lefèvre complements with modest and spontaneous camerawork.

It’s a touching tale of personal sacrifice which never succumbs to sentimentality... Filmmaker Alex Camilleri’s work is most impressive when the boat is at sea, the glossy, multicoloured paint job a deeply symbolic beacon amidst the shimmering waves.

At its most heated points, the storytelling here practically hovers between docudrama and melodrama, but it’s pulled down to earth by Camilleri’s keen eye for community relations and conflicts, and a vivid, perspiring sense of place (and plaice, for that matter). Scicluna’s slouchily charismatic authenticity in the role, meanwhile, keeps things consistently real — like an unforced Brando in unglamorous waders.

A simple, yet beautiful film due to this sense of place, Luzzu highlights a story that’s rooted in tradition and particularity. At times, rushed in its quest to find a central conflict, the film finds Camilleri crafting a coarse story, one void of laughs, jokes, or levity.

It’s a highly realistic, nigh-on documentarian exploration (enhanced by non-professional performances) which the director (who also wrote the screenplay) manages to transpose into a finely restrained fiction film, which easily arouses empathy over the often-difficult choices which present themselves at the crossroads of a human life - in this instance that of a man who is struggling in the present, caught between the past and the future.