While the film is only a semi-tolerable juvenile romance, there is something interesting in the disruptive, rebellious rhythm of the film that unpretentiously expresses a certain form of economically marginalized and excluded life.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
There are a few things worth considering about Fiore, an otherwise amateur, saccharine love story by Italian director Claudio Giovannesi. The first has to do with the way in which the film manages to express, somehow in its own structure and rhythm, the very rebelliousness acted-out in its characters. Refusing to conform to any predefined narrative, to focus on what might be considered a transcendent human truth, the characters of the film simply abide their time in prison. There doesn't appear to be any real meaning to their life, no happiness or hope for it; rather life is a series of revolts against this or that authority in a desperate struggle to feel themselves part of life. And this is mirrored in the way the film, in a slightly amateur, unpolished way moves from one scene to the next, in unsteady camera shot, running behind a moving character that evokes a kind of aimless, directionless, refusal. As such, it seems as if there is some deep coincidental logic between the rhythms of the director and those of the acting we see on screen, as if the entire film as an assemblage emerges from out of the very context that it depicts. In this way, the film is profoundly unpretentious: it is where it comes from and nothing more.
Second, and connected with the first, the film also manages to express what could be considered a typically modern form of distraction (certainly this is a typical aspect of life in Europe). Looking at cell-phones in church, in the middle of a conversation, focusing on the window while someone tries to teach you a lesson, eating in the middle of a classroom--European life is comprised of this kind of individuality, singularly defined against others and solidified through its liberal system of rights and freedoms. In the same way, the film itself never tries to be more than this life. Rather than developing an artificial cinematic temporality, this film emerges from out of the partial moments and constant disruptions of the lives of its characters: laughing at their son singing for the first time in church, walking out of the kitchen to experience the wind on the beach, walking behind another in the night. These, and many other situations in the film, express this kind of solitary individualism that never fully finds its place in the events that take place around it, events that are themselves never complete because of it. This is a time and a culture, a social formation of semi to near-total dysfunction, on the fringes of the coherent lives others live, with careers, friends, functional family units--lives that have some relationship to meaning.
Finally, worthwhile is some insight into the Italian juvenile detention and prison system. Compared, for instance to the American full prison lock-down, people in sterile environments with thick sealed doors and bulletproof glass, two hours of playtime each day and a strict form or solitary penalty for breaking rules, the Italian system seem absurdly lenient. This is not a system whose sole purpose is punishment: it also contains within it some hope for the rehabilitation of its youth: organizing a party, dressing up, being allowed to make oneself beautiful and then model themselves to others as a way of instilling some self-confidence, that these youth are more than the dysfunction and breakdown, the crimes from which they have come; sharing a dorm room, being allowed to smoke, to open windows, that there is even space for something like the love relationship that is the flower of this film to develop reveals an Italy with compassion. There is humanity in this detention center and some form of emotional logic and reticence to the punishments it applies that tries to instill by non-punitive conveyance a form of civil, Italian social and cultural behavior in these youth.
However, when it comes to the 'love' at the center of this film (what is the flower after which the film is titled that blooms amidst all this schizophrenia of partiality), it is certainly woefully inadequate. Saccharine, naive, nearly meaningless, what is shown in this film barely provokes an emotional response at all. This flower is a bit embarrassing to watch acted-out, relies only on superficial smiles and exaggerated tenderness. It belies an idea of romance that has little or nothing to do with real love but is romance simply for the purposes of the film. In this way the film is contrived, its 'love' only something perceptible as pastiche concept or, in the most generous reading, as that kind of love only a young person can experience. This is a 'love' of 'not writing good', a love of little more than physical attraction and the idea that two people can together find something of value amidst the endless expanse of meaninglessness in which they find themselves, what is today a typical form of breakdown in liberal capitalism. In this sense, the film expresses a typically superficial romantic ideal which is itself part of the reason love (or 'love') is today everywhere under siege1: it is a concept of it and an idea that is totally inadequate to life, devoid of any real transcendent and long-duration truth, and totally vulnerable to every form of disruption, disagreement and real-life challenge. What is really romance masquerading as love like this folds in the face of its first real challenge and fades away after the initial passion of physical contact and newness fades away.