19/03/2025 - The new film by Stefano Sardo, set during the 2020 lockdown, starts like a romantic comedy and becomes increasingly effervescent as its plot gets more complicated

Who could forget the evening (it was 10 March 2020) when the president of the Council spoke to the nation and asked all Italians to stay locked up at home because of Covid? Like many of us at that time, the characters of Close to Me (in Italian cinemas on 20 March through Medusa Film) heard it on the news while sitting down for dinner. In Stefano Sardo’s film, however, in that very moment – while husband and wife are at the table with her father and his new girlfriend 30 years his junior as guests – a strange girl rings the bell, the guest of the B&B next door. She’s forgotten the entrance code, her phone is out of battery and she needs to recharge it for a few minutes, just enough time to turn it back on and find the numbers to put into the keyboard. And so, while Italy enters lockdown, a strange woman arrives to upset the lives of her neighbours.

The new film by the Piemont writer-director (his debut as director, With or Without You [+see also:
trailer
interview: Stefano Sardo
film profile], was in the 2021 selection of the Giornate degli Autori in Venice) is not about the pandemic, even though it feeds on the strange atmosphere of suspension and isolation that characterised that time. It is rather “the story of Amanda… and how she ruined my life”, as stated by Luca, the protagonist of the film played by Riccardo Scamarcio. A high school philosophy professor, frustrated and badly paid, he’s been trying to have a child with his wife Sara (Maria Chiara Giannetta, seen recently in the box office hit Madly [+see also:
film review
film profile]), with the help of her doctor father (Paolo Pierobon), arrogant and a womanizer, who never misses an opportunity to remind Luca that he paid for the beautiful house in which they live. Sara is also a doctor, which is why she is subjected to exhausting shifts in hospital to face up to the emergency. And so what does Luca do, alone at home all day (and night)? He starts spying on the beautiful neighbour Amanda (played by Cuban actress Mariela Garriga) from his window, and things move quickly from casual encounters on the shared terrace to bed.

The first part of Close to Me therefore looks like a rather predictable romantic comedy, which indulges the forbidden passion that the lazy Luca and the femme fatale Amanda consume with urgency when and where they can. While the loving and courageous Sara is busy saving lives, and returns home always more exhausted and with marks from the mask she wears continuously for hours streaking her face, our two heroes in pajamas make love, enjoy the sunshine and drink wine all day: they also make you a little angry. Yet little by little, things get complicated, Amanda’s real identity is revealed, and the plot (written by the director together with Giacomo Bendotti) starts stringing together one twist after another. Veering on the thriller yet maintaining a good dose of irony, the film thus becomes more interesting and lively. Having grown up in the shadow of a father who died a hero, Luca has the opportunity, for the first time, to do something great and to become the protagonist of his own life. How and with what results remain to be seen. In the cast, we also find Giulio Beranek and Francesco Brandi, the latter of which in a neurotic and funny incarnation of the man in crisis.

Close to Me was produced by Nightswim (Sardo’s and Ines Vasiljević’s company) in association with Medusa Film, and co-produced by Jelena Mitrović for Baš Čelik (Serbia). Foreign sales are handled by Minerva Pictures Group and TVCO.

(Translated from Italian)