One of the defining moments of being a young adult heading off to college is attempting, for better or worse, to define yourself. Are you going to be one of the in-crowd, socializing and partying your way to the future? Are you going to focus on your studies and graduate at the top of your class? Or are you going to pick neither route, forging your own strange and winding path, wherever it may lead you?
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In writer-director Giovanni Tortorici’s uncompromising feature debut, Diciannove , it’s clear from the get-go that its 19-year-old protagonist, shy and handsome Sicilian student Leonardo (promising newcomer Manfredi Marini), belongs to the latter group. And it’s also clear that this nearly plotless film, which follows every move of a veritable loner who refuses to mingle with his fellow classmates, adhere to the curriculum set out by his professors or engage in a romantic relationship — or really anything you’d expect in a movie about a college student — is as much an outsider as its main character.
Unspooling in Venice’s Orizzonti sidebar, Diciannove ( Nineteen ) was produced by Luca Guadagnino, for whom Tortorici served as an assistant on several projects. The backing of the Challengers director — himself on the Lido for the premiere of Queer — should help to boost the international profile of this extremely personal and introverted coming-of-age flick, which leaves a strong impression despite its imperfections.
Never quitting Leonardo’s side for nearly two hours, Tortorici tracks the sharp and soft-spoken undergraduate from his native Palermo to London, then on to Siena and finally Torino, as he bounces from one city to another in search of, well, something.
It would be easy to say Leonardo is searching for himself, but neither he nor the movie ever make that clear. In a sense he’s both being and becoming, going through different phases as so many of us do at that age, passionately pursuing an interest and then dropping it in the next scene, making a constant mess of his life — and whatever room he’s currently living in — before haphazardly trying to clean it up.
Diciannove is unflinchingly honest about what it’s like to be 19, and, for the most part, totally lost. And Tortorici’s insistence on capturing that feeling while avoiding the usual narrative tropes is what makes his film both fascinating and somewhat impenetrable.
Early on, there are hints of the story that could emerge out of Leonardo’s life. In the opening scene, he has a bad nosebleed in Palermo that seems to worry him. Does he in fact have a fatal disease that will be diagnosed later on? If that seems like a possibility, Tortorici casts that plot point off as soon as Leonardo arrives in London, where he plans to live with his sister, Arianna (Vittoria Planeta), and go to business school. Instead, he goes clubbing, drinks too much, fails to clean Arianna’s kitchen and decides he’s not interested in business school at all, but rather wants to pursue his true interest: Italian literature. And specifically, writers like 17th-century Jesuit author Daniello Bartoli.
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Suddenly Leonardo’s in the picturesque Tuscan city of Siena, enrolled in what’s supposed to be the best literary studies program in Italy. But soon enough, he’s managed to alienate his housemates, his fellow students and his professors, whom he criticizes both overtly and in notes he scribbles during lectures. Rather than basking in the beauty of his surroundings, he spends a good portion of his time there holed up in his modest room, where he reads all the books he can — though not those actually assigned to him — gets lost down social media rabbit holes and cooks vegetarian food on his hotplate.
It’s hard to get a handle on what Leonardo wants, because he doesn’t seem to know it himself. He looks for answers by reading every book by and on Bartoli, ditching his classes entirely at some point. In terms of a social life, he signs up for a dating app and peruses a few offers from men — Leonardo seems to be gay, though his sexual preference is something Tortorici refuses to define as well — then takes an interest in a 15-year-old kid he starts stalking, albeit harmlessly so, on the internet.
The film’s complete abandonment of plot will turn away viewers looking for some kind of guiding principle or shape to Leonardo’s life, but that’s also what makes Diciannove feel more real than many movies supposedly about being young today. In some ways, Tortorici is carrying on a tradition of Italian art films, including Fellini’s I Vitelloni and Pasolini’s Accattone , about disaffected youth who are part of a lost generation, although Leonardo seems to belong to no other group but his own.
Formally speaking, Tortorici reaches into a grab bag of techniques and tries lots of them out. There are sequences that have a ‘60s New Wave-ish vibe to them, such as when Leonardo wanders Siena while baroque music plays on the soundtrack and cameraman Massimiliano Kuveiller zooms in and out of locations. And there are other styles employed, especially in club scenes backed by blasting techno or Italian hip-hop that feel straight out of Euphoria .
Like his antihero, Tortorici seems to be constantly searching. And by the time Leonardo winds up back in Palermo for summer vacation, it looks like he may have finally found what he’s looking for. He’s surrounded by friends, dancing and laughing, happy like we’ve never seen him before. Maybe he shouldn’t have left home after all? But there he is a few scenes later, back in another city, wandering another street at night, heading toward a destination that Diciannove , of course, never reaveals.
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