29/04/2025 - Carefully curated on a visual level but emotionally glacial throughout, Paolo Costella’s drama reflects on the impact of losing a child on family ties

Hitting Italian cinemas on 30 April courtesy of Piper Film, following its premiere in Rome Film Fest’s Grand Public section back in October, Storia di una notte by Paolo Costella explores the impact which losing a child can have on family ties. Nanni Moretti previously explored the inability to communicate that comes with the unexpected death of a child in The Son’s Room [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a nigh-on definitive account which was released 24 years ago and which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes. It’s hard to ignore the impact of the destructive and all-consuming torment recently described in Felix Van Groeningen’s The Broken Circle Breakdown [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Felix van Groeningen
interview: Felix Van Groeningen
interview: Felix Van Groeningen
film profile] or the devastating consequences of loss explored by Kornél Mundruczó in Pieces of a Woman [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kornél Mundruczó and Kata W…
film profile], to name but two works along these lines, and Chloé Zhao will be offering up a Shakespeare-focused film in this field at the end of the year, in the form of Hamnet.

Loosely based on Angelo Mellone’s novel Nelle migliori famiglie and scripted by the director in league with Tania Pedroni (The Man Who Will Come [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Giorgio Diritti
film profile], Hidden Away [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Giorgio Diritti
film profile]), Storia di una notte follows a seemingly serene middle-class family. Piero and Elisabetta (played by Giuseppe Battiston and Anna Foglietta) were married young, despite the disapproval of the latter’s well-to-do family. We soon learn their harmony has been rocked by the tragic death of their firstborn child, Flavio, following an accident, for whose death the couple have alternately blamed each other. Their other two teenage children, Sara (Giulietta Rebeggiani) and Denis (Biagio Venditti), convince them to celebrate Christmas Eve in their maternal grandparents’ chalet on the snowy peaks of Cortina d'Ampezzo, as was once the family tradition. But when Denis is involved in a skiing accident, the family is plunged back into the nightmare of a long night spent waiting, paralysed by the fear of losing a second child (and a brother).

Paolo Costella is a gifted director and screenwriter who scooped multiple awards (including in Tribeca) for the screenplay he penned for Perfect Strangers [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. His filmography is essentially composed of excellent-quality comedy, and it’s rare for him to tackle dramatic stories of this kind. The mise en scene in Storia di una notte is meticulous, the director showcasing himself as if keen to compensate for the limits imposed by the writing. The GoPro dynamic in the snow scenes and the well-balanced use of different spaces - elegantly shot by the ever-faithful Fabrizio Lucci, even in wintery twilight - provide the characters with just the right level of breathing space, helping us to forget the “picture-postcard” risk that comes with setting the film in a mountain resort symbolic of Italian and international high society, and with its insistence on product placement (the make of the family car, in particular). A handful of oblique angles help to convey the family’s loss of equilibrium, but the thinking behind the frame with the camera at floor-level or the dramatic plongée shot from the ceiling looking down on a banal telephone conversation, isn’t quite as clear.

Ultimately, the film’s writing struggles to convey the eruption of pain which comes with such a devastating experience, which can profoundly endanger a couple’s relationship, and fails to convey the protagonists’ inability to put their desperation into words or attempt to rebuild their family. The contrived, somewhat rambling dialogue dampens all kinds of emotions, the focus, no doubt, being on avoiding sliding into melodrama and on reflecting family attitudes and social norms which err on the side of moderation when it comes to the acute emptiness and psychological turmoil associated with a traumatic and deeply destabilising event, such as the one that’s central to this film. Even innovative dramaturgical ideas such as the two protagonists who “imagine” an alternative version of events in a kind of emotional “sliding door” scenario, or the nature-based metaphor of the deer with her fawn (comparing the family to the herd) subsequently feel weak and unengaging.

Storia di una notte was produced by Tramp Limited together with RAI Cinema.

(Translated from Italian)