The Right Distance

The best Italian films almost always have a strong sense of landscape. And this is no exception. The place, which is probably in the province of Rovigo, along the river Po, is beautifully evoked by Mazzacurati. The story begins as a chronicle of everyday life in a very small town in Veneto (the area is called Polesine and it is near the Po delta). The only small event is the arrival of a new, young teacher in the local primary school. But this small event triggers other events, and somewhat disturbs the drowsy life of the place, peacefully drowned in the mists and the fog of the Po valley. But then, when 3/4 of the story have lapsed, there is a jolt, and the film turns into a crime story when the teacher is killed. It seems that everything is clear, and the culprit is quickly identified, arrested and sentenced--but things are not what they seem. I can imagine how a Hollywood director might have managed this story. Thanks god the movie wasn't shot in Hollywood. It works perfectly the way it is: with its slow rhythm and its minimal but elegant directing style. It also manages to show viewers a tranche de vie of today's provincial Italy, and say something clever and not at all foregone about the difficult integration of immigrants. All in all, one of the best Italian movies of the new century.

This drama is set in the northeast Italian province, a location the director Mazzacurati usually used as a background for his movies. It's the story of a young and attractive elementary school teacher Mara, who is relocated to a little town in the north of Italy. The initial plot is predictable since it carries out with the reactions of a small community to the arrival of the new teacher. In particular some characters stand out as the young Giovanni, who has a big passion for journalism and who starts out by writing small articles for a local newspaper; the rich entrepreneur who is at the center of the social life of the town; the Tunisian mechanic Hassan; who has a love story with Mara. The picture of the Italian provincial life is quite realistic but what really surprised me in a positive way was the unexpected noir turn the movie takes at the end and for which the movie deserves to be watched.

Basically a good murder mystery, 'The Right Distance' brings in contemporary issues like anti-foreign prejudices, marriages arranged with Eastern European women online, kids with computer smarts adults lack, and how these changes disrupt life in a little town. A beautiful young woman named Mara (Valentina Lodovini) comes to replace a schoolteacher in the Po Valley. Trouble ensues. One person in town doesn't miss a trick: 18-year-old Giovanni (Giovanni Capovilla). He is highly motivated to become a journalist and has persuaded Bengivenga (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), an editor at a big city paper, to allow him to work as a low-profile stringer in the town. His job is to keep his eyes and ears peeled without anybody finding out that he's a reporter. Naturally, he's good with the Internet. He helps Mara set up her connection and in the course of dong so finds out her email password. Giovanni checks in on it from home and starts reading the accounts of day to day experiences she emails to her best girlfriend back home. Thus over time he finds out that she's attracted to the local bus driver, Guido (Stefano Scandaletti), and that Hassan (Ahmed Hefiane), who runs the garage he himself works in, is attracted to her--and is stalking her outside her house in the dark. He also knows that Amos (Giuseppe Battiston), the tobacconist who's making a fortune taking people fishing, went out in his boat with Mara and made some moves on her. It's Amos who has the Romanian wife chosen from an online "catalog." Hassan is an older (but handsome) Tunisian man. He has family members in the area but isn't married. He has been in Italy a long time. An odd plot twist comes when Mara discovers he's stalking her, yet dates him. Somebody is killing the dogs in the area. As Giovanni reports in one of his stories for the city paper, this was the original M.O. of the "serial killer of Milwaukee." Mara's connection with Hassan leads to trouble. The title refers to some of Bencivegna's advice to Giovanni on how to be a good reporter. Don't get too close to your subjects, maintain your objectivity. The irony is that it's precisely getting too close that gets him his best story. The film has a surprise extended coda in which a crime and a trial have taken place, but Giovanni goes back and researches the results and discovers the real guilty party. He has already been hired by this time as a reporter on his mentor Bencivegna's newspaper and is living in the worse quarter of Milan but loving his new life. Newcomer Capovilla is adorable, and the film is skillful in keeping the theme of his journalistic efforts alive without letting it distract us from the film's study of character and locale that makes it interesting as a story. Mara is soulful and attractive; it's believable that she'd galvanize all the men around. The town is little more than a scattering of houses and businesses, and its vulnerability to whatever forces enter it is clear. In most of 'The Right Distance' Giovanni is in the background, hovering, reentering occasionally with a bit of voice-over. Part of the neat construction of the film is the way Giovanni's efforts as a journalist (stories that get little space in the paper, and others that do, finally the crime story he breaks that appears in all the major news outlets) is quietly woven into an overall picture that is much larger. In this sense director Mazzacurati does maintain "the right distance." An entertaining film and a well-told tale. Shown as part of the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series at Lincoln Center, June 2008.

La Giusta Distanza is slightly too long and shudders a bit about two-thirds of the way through when the tone which had been quite gentle, if realistic, suddenly becomes much darker, and it goes from being a really well acted culture clash romcom to a mystery complete with red herrings. But...don't let that put you off, it still hangs together, thanks to a great script, well-rounded minor characters, entirely credible and convincing central performances and atmospheric photography of the Po. Small town sleepiness is captured perfectly, a sleepiness and apparent wellbeing that hides terrible loneliness, unwilling conformity and a population unknowingly stuck in their ways. Everyone is trundling along doing what's expected of them until the primary school teacher takes a mad turn and her (beautiful) replacement quietly and unintentionally upsets the balance simply by being there. Everything, initially, happens quietly and slowly, and tragedy, when it strikes, is all the more shocking for that reason.

It is pleasant to see Carlo Mazzacurati, one of Italy's finest director, finally return to the artistic strength and depth of character or his early works such as "Notte Italiana". Set in a small northern Italian town whose solitude and cold it reflects so powerfully, the movie beautifully depicts a story of tragic humanity with characters mastered with excellence by three newcomers, among whom Valentina Lodovini emerges as a promising new actress. Likely the best Italian movie of the year, and beautifully photographed, "La Giusta Distanza" was greeted with enthusiasm by audiences at the Rome Cinema Festival with its story of passion and racial and social integration.