Respiro

Set on the beautiful and sun-drenched fishing island of Lampedusa, to the south of Sicily, Emmanuele Crialese's eerie and sensual 2002 Cannes Critics Week Grand Prize Winner is a celebration of the natural whilst a depiction of the harsh and stifling ways of traditional island life. The first time we meet the beautiful and earthy Grazia, passionately portrayed by Valeria Golino, she is singing along to Patti Pravo's sad and haunting "La Bambola, which charts the misfortunes of an unloved and downtrodden woman, with whom Grazia clearly identifies. Known for her eccentricities and emotional instability - taking to bed at a whim, leaving the children to make do with dinner from a tin - Grazia is resented by her neighbours and husband Pietro for her unpredictable and fiercely independent character. Bathing topless, interrupting Pietro's drinks with the men, taking off on a visiting Frenchman's boat and releasing wild dogs into the streets, Grazia openly challenges the island's staid and stifled conservatism. A conspiracy is hatched to send her away to a clinic in Milan for psychiatric treatment but Grazia has her own ideas, assisted by her brooding and compromised eldest son Pasquale, thwarting the town's designs for her yet setting in motion the steps towards Grazia's redemption.

The film develops at a slow and graceful pace, pausing at length to appreciate the time-steeped traditions of this fishing community. When the island's children are not running wild, engaged in minor gang battles amidst the ruins of unfinished building projects, they help the men on the trawlers bring the fish in or dive for sea urchins. Three groups compete to construct the tallest of wooden pyres, heralding the coming of an annual Festa.

The powerful presence of the emerald sea and the family's intimate connection with it resonates throughout, punctuated by evocative underwater filming and a haunting baritone saxophone. The sea is majestic and all powerful, providing the islanders with their main source of income notwithstanding its dwindling catch yet keeping them confined and cut off from the realities of the outside. Indeed, non-islanders are neither welcomed nor understood. Grazia's youngest, virtually uncontrollable son, Filippo, outrageously sends up a new Policeman from the mainland that his sister has her eye on, mocking him in a dialect he is sure the young Carabinieri cannot follow and Pietro has a confused scuffle on the pier with the Frenchman. Crialese's imagery is vivid and stark, his playful use of light to the enhancement of the film's mystic atmosphere. Everything is experienced through the visual and the physical. The children, so in tune with nature, are a delight, ravaging the arid and dry land for self-invented entertainment. Complimenting Pasquale's quiet and loyal revolt are the hilarious and precocious antics of Filippo.

Crialese asks us to consider if Grazia is truly unhinged or merely mad with frustration. Her disappearance echoes a local myth, spurring Pietro to place a Madonna on the seabed, praying alongside the remorseful islanders for Grazia's return. Respiro is a thoughtful and provocative meditation on nature and community, it is a release of our senses and a cinematic joy.