Nostalgia

Middle-aged Felice has returned home to Naples after 40 years abroad. He struggles with his mother tongue and doesn’t recognise figures from his youth, but Rione Sanità, the neighbourhood he grew up in, hasn’t changed all that much. Sandwiched between the catacombs and the Camorra, life here is lived among the dead. To start anew in this country that he still considers home, Felice feels the need to reconnect with Oreste, a childhood friend who is now a mafia boss.

Adapted from a novel by Ermanno Rea, Nostalgia is a simmering return-to-roots drama that unfolds against the backdrop of a historical Naples neighbourhood in which the reign of Camorra is countered by a church priest followed by the inhabitants tired of the continuous violence. Filmmaker Mario Martone romanticises neither the Camorra nor Naples, embedding his protagonist instead into the landscape of the city, by turns picturesque and threatening. As Felice reacquaints himself with the local population, we get a sense of the bonds that hold the community together, but also the choice between life and death that its young people constantly have to make.

Through an evocative editing that links Felice, Oreste and their common past, Nostalgia explores the differing forms the feeling for home can take. Defying the temptations of both sensational violence and sugar-coated reminiscence, Martone offers a homecoming film coloured as much by the anxiety of reintegration as the hope of renewal.

– Srikanth Srinivasan