After the Netflix series Zero a fantasy-drama-teenage story set in the outskirts of Milan, Paola Randi (Little Tito and the Aliens ) turns to cinema with her new story dedicated to young adult audiences, once again set in her hometown. The Story of Frank and Nina arrives in Italian cinemas on 3 October with Fandango Distribuzione after screening in the Orizzonti Extra section at the Venice Film Festival.
The third character in the film, after the titular Frank and Nina, is 18-year-old Carlo (played by newcomer Gabriele Monti), a young man from the north banlieue of Milan always armed with a spray can to cover walls with poetic sentences taken from books that people have thrown away, such as “life is teeming with innocent monsters” (Charles Baudelaire). Carlo himself feels a bit like a freak of nature: they call him Gollum because when he tries to speak, guttural sounds come out of his throat. Yet paradoxically, Carlo/Gollum is the narrative voice of the film, and he doesn’t talk but thinks – a lot, and we are swept up in the flow of his thoughts which often explain things that don’t need explaining because, as spectators, we see them very well on screen through the marvellous, dynamic and vital visual compositions that the director strings together (with photography by Matteo Carlesimo), in an alternation of sequences in black and white and in colour. This writer didn’t understand whether there was a reason or a code hidden behind this chromatic rotation, which seems to be more of a completely random aesthetic choice.
Carlo meets Frank (Samuele Teneggi), who’s around the same age, a fascinating bohemian with bleached hair, dark glasses and a wool coat, and a great storyteller, enough to more than compensate for Gollum’s silence and to narcissistically fill his own lack of affection in his family relations: a runaway, he has fled his mother (Anna Ferzetti) and we will never know why, but he has a good relationship with his grandfather, played by master of animation Bruno Bozzetto. Carlo’s projective identification on Frank to fight against the anxiety of social isolation almost reaches idolatry when Frank falls in love with the girl that Carlo likes so much, Nina (the sweet and instinctive Ludovica Nasti from My Brilliant Friend [+]). Nina is part of the Romani community, isn’t even 18, and has a little girl with a stereotypically mean man known as the Duce (Marco Bonadei). Between copper cable thefts, races through decaying industrial landscapes and attempting to get their middle school diploma to escape and have a better life, the three of them form a bond-refuge that reflects the post-adolescence desire for emotional growth and the search for a definitive identity, in a socially disadvantaged environment.
Frank and Nina’s story is a re-elaboration of the coming-of-age subgenre in the shape of a modern, disjointed yet energetic fable, with outsiders evolving in a circumscribed space-time that clashes with the realism of the environment and doesn’t tell us anything about the real habits, rituals and language of young Zoomers. More than a narrative, Randi’s film is the construction of an empathic feeling that explores the intersectionality of three bodies and their confused and vital thirst for love and perspectives, well expressed by the convincing performances of the three young actors. In this alternate reality, situations are nevertheless smoothed over and the eccentricity of the Frank character seems too “constructed”.
The Story of Frank and Nina is a co-production between Italy and Switzerland by Fandango with Rai Cinema and Spotlight Media Productions with RSI Radiotelevisione Svizzera. International sales are handled by Fandango Sales.