14/10/2022 - Francesca Archibugi adapts Sandro Veronesi’s bestseller, demanding a little extra effort from viewers to follow the free flow of memories depicted, but ultimately guaranteeing an emotional impact

A hummingbird is a tiny creature which invests all of its energy into staying right where it is, and this is the exact approach adopted by Marco Carrera, the protagonist of Francesca Archibugi’s new film The Hummingbird [+see also:
trailer
interview: Benedetta Porcaroli
film profile], which is based upon Sandro Veronesi’s bestselling novel of the same name, which itself won the 2020 Strega Prize and has since been translated into 25 languages. It’s a story spanning sixty years, in which the joys, pain and neuroses of a middle-class family like any other are interwoven with the evolution of an absolute and extraordinary love which extends across three generations. And in which holding everything together and standing strong is essential, even when faced with the unbearable.

Written by the director, in league with Laura Paolucci and Francesco Piccolo, The Hummingbird opened the 17th Rome Film Fest after world premiering in Toronto, and it’s one of those solidly structured melodramas which takes up the tricky challenge of depicting a free flow of memories, jumping from one time period to another and between different ages and times of life. The film opens onto a summery picture of a beautiful villa by the sea where the Carrera family are holidaying. The father and mother (Sergio Albelli and Laura Morante) of the family are getting ready to go out for dinner with friends, while their three twenty-something children, Marco, Giacomo and Irene (Francesco Centorame, Niccolò Profeti and Fotinì Peluso) are gearing up to do different things with their evening: Giacomo will collapse on the sofa, plying himself with alcohol, Marco will secretly meet the French girl whom he and his brother are mad for (Luisa, played by Elisa Fossati) and Irene, who’s struggling with her mental health, will listen to music with her headphones clamped over her ears. But that very night, a tragedy unfolds, sealing these various characters’ fates.

Several years later, a psychologist (played by Nanni Moretti) walks into the medical practice where Marco works (whose adult incarnation borrows the features of Pierfrancesco Favino), asking him endless questions about he and Luisa (whose adult version is played by Bérénice Bejo). The psychologist is actually treating Marco’s current wife, Marina (Kasia Smutniak), who has serious psychological issues and is totally out of control, giving her doctor good reason to believe that Marco is in danger. To begin with, the latter denies having a relationship with his old flame, before eventually confessing. From this point on, the puzzle pieces slowly come together, the number of characters multiplies, and events start to unfold in different time periods, between Rome, Paris and Tuscany. The houses and places remain more or less the same, only the faces, hairstyles and clothes change. One moment, a character moves around in a certain environment, the next moment, we see him/her in that same setting, but thirty years later.

Marco is a good man, he puts others first, even to the point of not living to the full the love which has accompanied him all his life. Or maybe, in so doing, he believes he’ll this love eternal. Other pain and losses rock his existence, but these are the cards he’s been dealt; he accepts this and wouldn’t swap his life for another. Pierfrancesco Favino once again plays an unusual male figure - a sensitive, reassuring and spiritual man - with real elegance. A little extra effort is required on the part of the audience in order to navigate the story’s temporal shifts and to draw links between events. But given the intensity of its story and directorial and acting approach, an emotional impact is definitely guaranteed.

Il colibrì is an Italian-French co-production, produced by Fandango and RAI Cinema and co-produced by Les Films des Tournelles - Orange Studio. International sales are entrusted to Fandango Sales.

(Translated from Italian)