Lonely [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film], the new documentary by Italian director Michele Pennetta, a graduate of Geneva’s HEAD and Lausanne’s ECAL, and the author of the acclaimed movies Il mio corpo [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Michele Pennetta
fiche film] and Fishing Bodies [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film], homes in on young characters who are grappling with an uncertain and frightening future which they’re trying to tame by dreaming. The film was presented in a world premiere within the Zurich Film Festival’s Focus Competition.

Lonely is a movie about adolescence, about “becoming a grown-up” in a world of adults who seem immune to desire, a world of ghosts who are clinging onto a suffocating life of dystopic undertones. Leading this new generation of restless souls are Federico (Federico Peduzzi) and Precious (Precious Adebayo), two youngsters fighting to find their place in the world, two dreamers resisting a fate which already seems mapped out for them.

Swinging between reality and utopias, Federico and Precious don’t let the difficulties of their stifling and normative lives get them down. They want to try out alternative lives, to experiment with different ways of being in the world, to desire, to express their own multi-faceted identities. Federico must contend with an unexpected cardiac issue and Precious, who’s in conflict with her mother, experiences a painful, forced form of independence, but the duo’s fears and fragilities are sublimated into music, a privileged medium through which they can express their inner world. United in their desire to escape, in their need to dream of a future that’s light years away from the reassuring lethargy invading their everyday lives, Lonely’s two protagonists have no intention of toeing the line, of acting out a script which others have written for them.

Without drifting into melodrama, Michele Pennetta depicts Federico and Precious’ everyday lives, their big little victories, their constant battle against so-called respectability which refuses all anomalies. Pennetta observes her characters with respect and poetic detachment, foregrounding their grey zones, their inevitable and endearing vulnerabilities. Their anxiety over a limited and restricted future becomes a battle for survival, a desperate attempt to change course towards a future which is free from normative limitations. In Federico and Precious’ world, adults are nothing more than ectoplasmic forms, ancillary presences who try, unsuccessfully, to calm their teenage ardour.

Lonely is a film inhabited by characters who are fighting to survive and to save the spontaneous, childlike side of themselves which rejects adult rules. Federico and Precious are caught between two worlds: the real, ultra-structured world which leaves little room for dreams, and a fantasy world which they desperately desire and which might lend meaning to their existence. Fragile and inhabited by a relentless desire for something new, the two protagonists of Pennetta’s latest film show us how crucial the adolescent period is for constructing our personalities, a suspended moment in time when anything suddenly seems possible and where you can become the hero or heroine of an as yet unwritten story.

Lonely is a tribute to these vulnerable and unrelenting characters, who are bravely trying to follow their dreams and their own luminous chimeras.

Lonely is produced by Geneva’s Close Up Films, RSI Radio e Televisione Svizzera, Italy’s Indyca Films, RAI Cinema and Arte (France), with world sales entrusted to The Open Reel.