Gioia is a middle-aged French teacher who still lives with her parents, but dreams of a great love. Alessio is a repeat student in the fourth year of secondary school, his sole objective being to make money, who dresses as a woman at night. By a twist of fate, a strange connection arises between the two of them in Gioia, the second fiction feature by Nicolangelo Gelormini, presented in competition at the 22nd Giornate degli Autori section of the Venice Film Festival. The Neapolitan director, collaborating for the second time with Valeria Golino after Fortuna - The Girl and the Giants [+lee también:
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entrevista: Nicolangelo Gelormini
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The screenplay, signed Giuliano Scarpinato and Benedetta Mori in collaboration with Chiara Tripaldi and Gelormini himself, won the 2021 Franco Solinas award and is based on the play Se non sporca il mio pavimento, itself freely inspired by a news story. We are in a timeless province, near Turin. After injuring his ankle and accepting a car ride, Alessio insinuates himself into Gioia’s life, a teacher at his school, to whom he asks for French lessons. Gioia is like a child: she practices kissing on her arm with Reality (the song from La Boum) in the background, puts on pastel-coloured jumpers with embroidered houses on them, and suffers the control of her mother Gisella (Betti Pedrazzi) over whatever she does. Alessio breaks into her house and upsets its balance, makes her dance and put on lipstick, but also follows her lessons on Flaubert with great interest. The boy is moved by the innocence of this woman, him who is used to getting exploited (by his “uncle” Cosimo) to satisfy the dark desires of older men, and is forced to take money home to his unfortunate young mother, who considers Alessio her “masterpiece” and squeezes him like a lemon.

Only Gioia takes an interest in him and his future, and Alessio gives her attention she has never received before. Their relationship becomes increasingly ambiguous and improbable, him young and beautiful, her resigned, repressed and much taller than him. But they both, in a way, need each other. Alessio starts to feel constrained by his second life in high heels or at the disposal of wealthy and unscrupulous women who offer him beautiful clothes in exchange for sex. He dreams of starting a business abroad and Gioia has a little sum saved up. “It’s all going so fast, no? -I’ve been slow my whole life.” But the prospect of a new life will have to confront the chains of a rotten and corrupt humanity.

A dark fable, with its small surreal moments, Gioia is “a cinematic invention to give flesh to the feeling of isolation that characterises our present”, Gelormini specified. Everything is taken to the extreme: the characterisation of the protagonists, the costumes they wear (especially Golino), the deprivation on one side, the purity on the other. Gioia is like a Little Red Riding Hood amongst many wolves, and Valeria Golino knows how to make her poignant like few others could have.

Gioia was produced by HT Film, Indigo Film and Vision Distribution, in collaboration with Sky. International sales and Italian distribution are handled by Vision Distribution.