L'immensità (transl. The Immensity) is a 2022 drama film directed by Emanuele Crialese, who co-wrote the screenplay with Francesca Manieri and Vittorio Moroni. It stars Penélope Cruz, Luana Giuliani and Vincenzo Amato. An international co-production between Italy and France, the film follows a dysfunctional family in Italy in the 1970s.
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Synopsis
In 1970s Rome, Clara is a nonconformist Spanish expatriate trapped in a loveless marriage to Felice, an unfaithful and abusive businessman, with whom she has three children: Adriana, Gino and Diana. Their eldest child, 12-year-old Adriana, experiences gender dysphoria. Adriana rejects girlhood and instead identifies as a boy, wearing boys' clothes and adopting the masculine name Andrea. One day, Andrea befriends Sara, a Romani girl who knows him as a boy. Upon a shared sense of being outsiders, Andrea and Clara grow closer.
Production
The screenplay was written by Crialese, Francesca Manieri and Vittorio Moroni. An Italian-French co-production, L'immensità was produced by Wildside, Warner Bros. Entertainment Italia, Chapter 2, Pathé, and France 3 Cinéma.
Release
The film had its world premiere at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on 4 September 2022. It was released theatrically in Italy on 15 September 2022 by Warner Bros. Pictures and in France on 11 January 2023 by Pathé Films and The United States on May 12 2023 by Music Box Films.
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, L'Immensità holds an approval rating of 83% based on 59 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "L'immensità can be excessively immense at times but with an always superlative Penélope Cruz at its core, this vibrant coming-of-age story with undeniable heart is a memorable experience." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 70 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Leslie Felperin of The Hollywood Reporter summed the film up as "a vibrant, if over-crammed, family affair." For Variety, Guy Lodge writes that the film "is too palpably pained and heartfelt to be called slight, but it's sensitive and peculiar in ways that feel fragile".
Robbie Collin, writing for The Daily Telegraph, rated the film four out of five stars, deeming the "surprisingly autobiographical" picture to be "a child's-eye-view portrait of domestic sadness and the craving for escape from it". Wendy Ide of Screen Daily highlighted Cruz's performance as "a cross between Sophia Loren and a solar flare". Stephanie Bunbury of Deadline Hollywood considered that deep down, the film "is fundamentally quite bleak, but it wears a delightfully cheerful face".