European Films

The triumvirate of screenwriters Stefano Rulli and Sandro Petraglia and director Marco Tullio Giordana , who brought us the fictionalised, two times three-hour overview of recent Italian history called La meglio gioventù (The Best of Youth), are back with a much shorter film that focuses on a single subject: Quando sei nato, non puoi più nasconderti (Once You Are Born, You Can No Longer Hide). Italian stallion Alessio Boni is still part of the mix, but the strain on one’s bottom is certainly gone even though the story could have been tighter here as well. This new project, just shy of two hours in its entirety, is also a tad overly didactic but nevertheless sheds some light on one of Southern Europe’s most pressing problems: clandestine immigration.

 

Sandro (played by affable newcomer Matteo Gadola) is the son of a well-off factory owner from Brescia (Boni) and his wife (Cescon). On a men-only boat trip in Greece with his father and his uncle (Corsato), Sandro is thrown overboard when a wave hits the boat; the two brothers do not notice anything because they believe Sandro to be sound asleep in his bed. Sandro is eventually picked up by a rickety boat carrying illegal immigrants to Italy. On the boat, Sandro meets the Romanian siblings Radu (the talented Vlad Alexandru Toma) and Alina (Ester Hazan), who say they are still minors as well. The three will end up in a waiting facility for illegal immigrants in Italy when the two Italians in charge abandon the ship and the immigrants are picked by the Coast Guard.      

Quando sei nato... takes its time in setting up the characters and situation, and despite a nice father-son chemistry between Gadola and Boni, the first thirty minutes before Sandro goes overboard feels protracted, with another ten minutes with the boy at sea before being picked up making the intro certainly too long. The straining dark blue photography (courtesy of Roberto Forza) which shows Sandro alone at sea at night makes these ten minutes feel like ten hours, which is probably close to the time he was really at large, but which is hardly a good example of expedient storytelling. Things pick up when Sandro is picked up and meets the sibling close to his own age. At this point the storytelling perspective stays close to Sandro and his naive and youthful outlook on things.

 

The scenes at the transit facility for illegal immigrants are too overly didactic to completely ring true, but here Sandro’s perspective is a great aid in creating a new way of looking at the problem of these immigrants; Sandro does not understand why they should not be allowed into the country and treats them as complete equals who have completely equal rights. The casting of Gadola, whose looks are more generically Mediterranean rather than specifically Italian, add to the distinct sensation that the young boy is privileged only because he was born in a richer country than most of his fellow boat farers.

 

The film wisely keeps to this recklessly childish way of looking at the problem, not offering any solutions beyond Sandro using his pocket money to buy a hungry Alina a sandwich. Rather than resolving the problems surrounding illegal immigration, Quando sei nato... simply seems to suggest that we should try and forget our accumulated knowledge of laws and customs every now and again and look at fundamental problems the way a child would. This simple message and the inspired performances from its child actors is what keep this long and at times preachy film from drowning in its own melodrama.

 

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