A Black History Review

I may be wrong, that’s for sure, but my impression is that A dark story is not really a film that tells the story of a woman who, after years of violence, kills an ex-husband, and we need to understand whether she did it in self-defense or not. On the other hand, I also confess that I have not read the novel of the same name by Antonella Lattanzi from which this film was based, and therefore I am not able to evaluate any slippages, or differences between what was on the page and what is now on the screen.
However, it seems clear to me, even from the casting choiceswhich is the primary interest of Leonardo D’Agostini (here at his second work later The sample) does not lie in the ambiguities (real or presumed) regarding the guilt or innocence of the apparent protagonist, nor in the direct analysis of male violence embodied by the character of Giordano De Plano (well done), and not only because the scenes in which this violence is told are, on the whole, very few, even compared to trailer.
A trailer which, as is natural, presents the film in the most marketable light: and this means on the one hand emphasis on the presence and role of Laetitia Castaan international star and a woman of clear charm, and on the other hand the representation of that male violence which is rightly more and more often told in order to be implicitly and explicitly condemned.

Then of course, you can easily see A black story from this point of view, like a drama about domestic violence, and like a judicial thriller hinged on the guilt or innocence of the Caste character. It would be legitimate, and right. And yet, a but A Black Story seems to focus on something a little different. On another character, on another actor.
With Andrea Carpenzano D’Agostini had already worked in Sampleand therefore he knew very well what the Roman is like a pure and natural talent, the best actor of his generation, someone who, whatever role you put him in, will inevitably become the center of gravity of a story, the repository of the spectator’s attention and gaze. And, also for this reason, it is clear that A dark story it is his film, the film of his character: Nicola the eldest son of the characters of Caste And DePlano.

Gradually and inexorably, A dark story – written by D’Agostini with Ludovica Rampoldi, and the author of the novel Lattanzi – shifts the focus from Laetitia Casta’s Carla to Carpenzano’s Nicolathe young man who, since he was a child, had to witness the violence taking place in his home and who very early on had to shoulder the frightening burden represented by moral support for his mother, and the protection and care of his two younger sisters.
It is Nicola who, when his mother is arrested for killing his father, will have to take responsibility for keeping together what remains of his family, his sisters Rosa and Mara, and instead keeping away his father’s family, who would like to separate them. And that’s when A Black Story starts to show the most interesting things about him. That’s when D’Agostini, who shoots his film with care and a certain visual elegance, which on the other hand never leads to aestheticism as an end in itself, throws away the mask and tells what I think he has most at heart to tell.

Through the character of Nicola, and the intense interpretation of Carpenzano – capable as in recent times Another Ferragosto to be powerful in the undertone – A dark story turns out to be not so much a story that tells of violence and the reaction to it, the result of exasperation and desperation, but of consequences in those who witnessed that violence, who suffered it passively, like smoking, and who were shaped by that violence.
If on the one hand Nicola, who physically carries the weight of the past and responsibility, will bring this need for care, protection and nurturing towards his sisters and his mother to the extreme consequences. And yet, when the tension rises, the reflections of what he has seen for long and painful years are triggered in him: the voice that rises, the hand that tightens his sister’s arm, the slap that comes when faced with a rude response. . Introjected patriarchy, it’s called today, from which however Nicola somehow manages to save himself. Which, at least, he can control.

On the other hand, further confirmation of who the protagonist of the film really is and where the attention of the story, In the finale, Nicola will also have to deal with the consequences of his care and protectioncollide with another, shocking (more for him than for us) consequence of violence, and continue to carry on his shoulders an unspeakable, unjust, painful weight, which would crush most of us, carried and told with serious dignity, by Andrea Carpenzano.