Storia di vacanze

Storia di vacanze
Original title:Storia di vacanze
Director:Fabio D’Innocenzo, Damiano D’Innocenzo
Release:Cinema
Running time:100 minutes
Release date:Not communicated
Rating:
The heat of summer announces the upcoming vacations for the families of this peaceful suburb of Rome. Happy families, who manage to create the illusion of a real vacation despite their limited means. Normal families. Well, almost. Because their children will soon shatter the fragile veneer of appearances...

Mulder's Review

"The following is inspired by a true story. 
The true story was inspired by a lie. 
The lie is quite uninspired".

Italian cinema seems capable of the best with dramatic films, westerns and horror films that seem to lose none of their impact in the face of time. We therefore better understand the presence within the crime film festival the presence of the second film by Fabio & Damiano D'Innocenzo after Brothers of Blood (2018). In Storia di vacanze. 

The action of Storia di vacanze takes place in a suburb of Rome, the heat camouflages a stifling atmosphere of alienation. While the families seem normal, this is only an illusion: in the houses, courtyards and gardens, silence envelops the subtle sadism of the fathers, the passivity of the mothers and the guilty indifference of the adults. The despair and repressed rage of the children will explode and pierce this grotesque facade, with devastating consequences for the entire community.

Storia di vacanze aims to be original and gripping, but despite its beautiful photography, it does not fully succeed in holding our attention.  In spite of its will to propose a kind of modern urban tale, the film cruelly lacks rhythm and takes a rather pessimistic look at the current youth. We can understand the will of the writers and directors Fabio and Damiano D'Innocenzo. While the study of human relations in a city like the one shown in Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides (200) relied on an excellent cast and an invested director, Storia di vacanze seems that the directors do not manage to totally master their film and therefore to create a real immersion for the spectators.

There were however good ideas in the script such as showing the relationships between neighbors and a certain jealousy between them and especially the violent behavior of some adults unable to explain their frustrations otherwise. In the same way, the voice-over of the film could have been better used. Very present at the beginning of the film, it disappears little by little as if the directors did not know what to do with it. From a simple chronicle, the film becomes a thriller that paralyzes the whole rhythm of the film and shows that the directors didn't know in which direction to go. This frustration is felt throughout the story and makes this film unconvincing.

Storia di vacanze
Written and directed by Fabio & Damiano D'Innocenzo
Produced by Agostino & Giuseppe Saccà
With Elio Germano, Barbara Chichiarelli, Lino Musella, Gabriel Montesi, Max Malatesta, Tommaso Di Cola, Giuletta Rebeggiani, Justin Korovkin, Giulia Melillo, Laura Borgioli
Music by Paolo Carnera
Director of photography: Paolo Carnera
Editing: Esmeralda Calabria
Production: Pepito Produzioni, Amka Films Productions, QMI Interactive, Rai Cinema, Vision Distribution
Distribution: Le Pacte (France)
Release date: Not communicated
Running time: 100 minutes

Seen on May 29, 2021 (Reims polar)

Mulder's Mark: