05/09/2023 - VENICE 2023: Enrico Maria Artale’s new film is a personal look at a seriously flawed mother-son relationship

Margarita Rosa De Francisco and Edoardo Pesce in El Paraíso

Forty-year-old Julio Cesar (Edoardo Pesce) still lives with his Colombian mother (Margarita Rosa De Francisco). Born and raised in a town outside of Rome, he has never visited Colombia himself. In this detail, one can already spot the displacement at the heart of El Paraíso [+see also:
trailer
interview: Enrico Maria Artale
film profile], Italian director Enrico Maria Artale’s third film. Exactly ten years ago, his debut, The After Match [+see also:
trailer
film profile], won the Pasinetti Opera Prima Award in Venice’s Orizzonti, and this section is also where his newest, El Paraíso, is premiering, as part of the festival’s 80th edition.

The more time passes, the less likely a natural separation becomes for the two protagonists. We meet them at a late stage in their lives and with a clear knowledge that nothing has changed for decades. Unsurprisingly, complex dynamics are at play between Julio Cesar and his mother (who remains nameless throughout the film), and not only because they share a tiny house and she impinges on his time and freedom. They also work together for a local drug dealer, taking care of cocaine mules coming into the country from Colombia. One such “guest” is Ines (Maria Del Rosario), a young Latina, whom Julio takes a liking to. A rather embarrassing scene involving laxatives and nursing becomes something close to a meet-cute in a rather transgressive narrative move.

Ines sparks disagreements and jealousy between the son and his mother almost instantly, and one can easily spot the toxicity lurking in every aspect of this Oedipal relationship. Resentment, passive-aggressiveness, a lack of respect for boundaries – they’re all there, but in a very relatable way. Artale is a director of precision and approaches his film with a holistic notion of a world, a believable artificiality. It’s obvious that both the mother and Julio are characters of flesh and blood, and their flawed relationship is a marvel of realism. That said, their world is effectively a gilded cage, even if they live on the margins of society and lack a residence permit. There’s the occasional visit to a bar where they dance salsa, bachata and merengue: in the film’s opening scenes, spirits are high, and one could easily mistake them for lovers or close friends.

That very ambivalence is the driving force behind the movie, and carries over through the conversations, the snappy dynamics and the different languages spoken – a mix of Spanish and Italian. The interesting dual concept of mother-motherland is doubled within the context of languages, and when thinking of roots, we cannot help but think of family. There is a fine line between support and suffocation, between unconditional love and manipulation, and anyone can easily slide from one to another merely because the bonds are so strong that they could even end up breaking a bone.

El Paraíso was produced by Rome-based Ascent Film and Young Films, as well as RAI Cinema.