12/08/2024 - In her second feature, Italian director Adele Tulli explores the frightening implications and astonishing potential of the digital world in which we’re immersed on an everyday basis

Presented as a world premiere within the Locarno Film Festival’s Cineasti del Presente competition, Real [+see also:
interview: Adele Tulli
film profile] - the second feature by Italian director Adele Tulli - plays with and cheerfully mocks the codes of the multiverse. Well aware of the power the digital world holds over us - like an octopus with countless, viscous tentacles - the director offers up a snapshot of a hyper-connected world which no longer has any concept of how truly grotesque it’s become. After Normal [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], which highlighted the artificiality of gender norms, the director is now tackling the concept of reality and the expansion of our universe far beyond the tangible, towards frightening, virtual destinations which have parasitised this reality.

Unsatisfied with the world in its current form, with its contradictions and, primarily, its frustrations, the protagonists of Real are, like many of us, trying to access other realities which are capable of satisfying their deepest desires and of piecing back together the often-shattered fragments of their dreams. The film opens with a close-up on a child who’s in the middle of a conversation with his virtual babysitter who, when asked: “do you think I’m handsome?”, supplies the terse response: “it doesn’t matter how many times you ask me that, I’ll always say that you’re the most handsome boy in the world”. A reply which epitomises the need for reassurance felt by all the film’s protagonists. Unable to bear or process basic human emotions such as disappointment, frustration and insecurity, they withdraw, like many of us, into their smartphones and computers, desperately trying to find themselves or, at least, find the image they have of themselves.

Tulli makes no attempt to hide her critical view of the increasingly monstrous digital bulimia currently at play (the lyrics of Ascendant Vierge’s Influenceur song are interesting in this sense, acting as a counterpoint to the images on screen), but the movie never turns into a moral treatise; on the contrary, it plays with the codes of this world, highlighting its tragic and inevitable imperfection. Over the course of the film, we see meditative dances on Zoom, discussions about avatars in the metaverse, influencers crying in desperation, aware of their loneliness but unable to escape the characters they’ve constructed for themselves on their social networks, a cam girl who takes refuge in music and in her dog’s affection, a group of gamers in detox in an unnamed monastery, and cameras which film, categorise and count every single thing, from the backpacks of passers-by to the number of migrants on makeshift boats. The film is enriched with dystopic collages composed of online images, which ultimately create a nightmaresque din. But although what’s depicted by Tulli is nothing short of a Dantesque circle, there are plenty of moments of reflection in the film on what the digital world really has to offer - even when approached with minimal knowledge - or rather on the possibility of being what we really want to be, outside of external pressure or social constructs. The discussions between two pairs of avatars who make the most of the freedom the metaverse offers and ascribe themselves the genders they actually feel to be theirs, is interesting in this sense.

Profound, like the depths of the sea it depicts in a rare moment of respite from the cacophony of the virtual world, but also remarkably playful, Real confronts us with our weaknesses and with the compulsive need, that (almost) all of us feel, to escape from an increasingly dark and unsatisfying reality. But, despite our best efforts, there doesn’t yet seem to be a virtual world capable of delivering happiness. 

Real was produced by Pepito Produzioni, FilmAffair, RAI Cinema and Luce Cinecittà (Italy) in co-production with Les Films d’Ici (France). Intramovies is managing international sales.

(Translated from Italian)