IO CAPITANO TBC

Journey into fear…

★★★★★ OUT 5 APRIL CINEMAS

The cousins must take huge risks at sea to reach Italy

After dark fables Tale of Tales (2015), Dogman (2018) and Pinocchio (2019), Italian writer/director Matteo Garrone here turns his attention to the tortuous migrant journey of two Senegalese teenagers heading for Europe.

Living in Dakar, 16-year-old cousins Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall) depart for Italy, first by overcrowded bus, and then on foot as two members of a party forced to cross the blistering Sahara Desert to Libya. En route they are ripped off and far worse by traffickers, with beatings and killings and time spent in a squalid prison all part of their journey. And still the worst lies ahead – aiming an overloaded rust bucket of a boat in the vague direction of Sicily and relying on Allah to steer them across the Mediterranean.

Though undeniably harrowing, Garrone’s drama finds beauty in its unforgiving landscapes, and grace in its protagonists’ hopes, dreams and responses to terrible setbacks. It is, beneath the surface, another of Garrone’s fairy tales, its heroes having to overcome a series of trials as they journey towards adulthood. But never is the brutal reality compromised – it’s subtly and assuredly done, even when Garrone introduces the odd flourish of magical realism. Will this Homeric tale be fitted with a happy ending? That you’re never sure of what’s to come is to Garrone’s great credit.

THE VERDICT Nominated for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars and Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes, Io Capitano is a tough trip, but well worth taking.

CLOSE YOUR EYES 12A

Catch afallen star…

★★★★★ OUT 12 APRIL CINEMAS

Despite his status as one of Spain’s greatest directors, Close Your Eyes is only Víctor Erice’s fourth feature, made 50 years after his cinema-haunted classic childhood fable The Spirit of the Beehive (1973).

Film and its power to inspire also fuel his rich, rambling detective story, which lures us in with a handsome and unfinished film-withina-film, 1990’s The Farewell Gaze, where a war veteran is charged with finding a mysterious tycoon’s daughter.

Twenty-plus years later, the film’s broke director Miguel (a worldweary Manolo Solo) is enlisted by a ‘cold case’ TV show to help investigate why lead actor Julio Arenas (José Coronado) disappeared for good during shooting. This thoughtful, meandering film uses Miguel’s mournful curiosity to truffle out Julio’s disillusioned daughter (Ana Torrent, a poignant callback to her Beehive role), and stoical one-time lover and anti-Franco activist Lola (Soledad Villamil), to weigh up if Julio was suicidal or murdered for adultery, or if he just plain vanished.

Taking a Dune-worthy 169 minutes to tell its ruminative tale, this is Slow Cinema at its slowest. But if the story is slender, the themes are big, and Julio’s mystery untangles in a gentle but engrossing fashion that shows how life’s losses can become unlikely gains. A heartfelt elegy for big-screen cinema, it’s also an intriguing commentary on Erice’s career gaps; let’s hope it’s the start of a Malick-style comeback.

THE VERDICT Erice’s film-obsessed arthouse mystery is glacially paced, but its good things come to those who wait.