Ardenza review – beguiling cine-essay about the angst of the 90s youth generation

Bittersweet memories rise like mist in Daniela de Felice’s impressionistic, sensuous documentary recalling the halcyon days of her youth in 1990s Italy. Ardenza employs strikingly tactile visual techniques: it begins with roving camera movements that cruise through long, cavernous hospital corridors. Alluding to her gruelling treatment for an unnamed condition, De Felice’s narration then rolls back to the past as she speaks of romantic relationships and student activism under Silvio Berlusconi’s administration, all charged with tumultuous passion. Sepia-toned images are projected on what looks like a fluttering fabric screen whose surface is flecked with subtle black ridges and marks.

Presented in this unusual fashion, footage of this era gains a highly textured, at times ghostly, quality. Scenes of nocturnal streets, tranquil forests and fervent protests are punctuated by De Felice’s stunning watercolour drawings, which focus on small, intimate details that can hold a world of meaning. From a first kiss to a faded blood stain on a jacket, these poignant strokes of colour convey the unspoken angst of a generation.

These artworks are not presented as finished projects. In closeups in which De Felice either starts a sketch from scratch or adds some final touches, we are afforded a glimpse of her creative process. In making her craft visible to the viewer, she shows how memories are never frozen in time but beguilingly shapeshift and evolve.

The director’s voiceover, full of poetic turns of phrase, emerges as the emotional anchor that turns this documentary into an eclectic cinematic essay. In the same way that De Felice’s recollections reach through space and time, Ardenza collates a constellation of disciplines with astonishing dexterity.

• Ardenza is on True Story from 26 July.