Cinema Savannah screens Italian writer-director's autobiographical film 'L’immensità,' July 7

Tomasz Warchol brings the Golden Lion-nominated "L’immensità," starring Penelope Cruz, to Savannah audiences on July 7 for its regional debut.

"L’immensità" is essentially both of a coming-of-age and coming-out tale set in 1970s Rome that mirrors writer-director Emanuele Crialese’s own story of transitioning from Emanuela to Emanuele during a time when there was even less acknowledgment of gender dysphoria and fewer rights accorded to LGBTQ+ people. The film drew raves at Sundance earlier this year with what Beatrice Loayza in her New York Times review called a "sun-dappled nostalgia trip bristling with Oedipal tension."

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Luana Giuliani portrays Adriana/Andrew, the oldest of Clara's (Cruz's) three children with an emotionally distant and philandering husband, portrayed by Vincenzo Amato. Adriana, nicknamed Adri, yearns for another life – an outsized, vibrantly-realized vision of a world where he gets to live as the boy he knows himself to be. Without an accepted vocabulary for talking about his transgender identity, Andrew tells adults that he’s an alien from another galaxy and makes a habit of running away to pursue a local Roma girl who accepts his boyhood at face value.

While most around Andrew trivialize his concerns, Clara tries to protect him without fully understanding him. She, too, feels like an outsider as a glamorous Spanish woman married to an Italian man who forces himself on her and gets his secretary pregnant, both of which puts Andrew in the position of protecting Clara.

"The Immensity," as the title translates into English, refers to the scale of something. Is that burden Andrew's or those around him who cannot accept what isn't easily defined or classified?

In a Hollywood Reporter interview, Crialese said he made the film to explore his own story. “We live in a political climate that looks for easy enemies and targets, [but the real] enemy is fear.”

Perhaps fear, then, is the immense weight carried by a society.

English subtitles. 97 minutes

If You Go >>

What: CinemaSavannah's regional premiere of "L’Immensita" (Italy, 2023)

Where: Savannah Cultural Arts Center, 201 Montgomery St.

When: 7 p.m., July 7; box office opens at 6 p.m.

Tickets: Tix are $10 each, cash preferred

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Cinema Savannah screens Italian movie L’immensità Penelop Cruz