SICILIAN GHOST STORY
Spirited Away
RELEASED 3 AUGUST TBC | 105 minutes
Directors Fabio grassadonia, antonio Piazza
Cast Julia Jedlikowska, gaetano Fernandez, sabine Timoteo, Corrine Musallari
Grim reality and Grimm fairy tales entwine audaciously in this story of two kids in love, separated by the adult world at its cruellest.
In a Sicilian village in the ’90s, Luna and Giuseppe have a joyful after-school date. Then Giuseppe, son of a supergrass testifying against the Mafia, suddenly disappears. As it becomes obvious he’s been kidnapped, Luna searches for him, railing at the tight-lipped grown-ups and battling her mum, who tells her to forget Giuseppe.
Wood and water motifs lend this dark story lyricism; the roaming camera and howling, chittering soundscapes suggest a supernatural presence constantly peering at the characters. Comparisons to Guillermo del Toro are apt – Luna’s rough-hewn family cellar could be straight from his world. But don’t expect animatronic creatures or special effects, barring some sublime underwater cinematography.
Instead, there are lingering poetic passages – a butterfly’s flight to the sea, rags disintegrating in a river – which take the film closer to arthouse directors like Lucile Hadžihalilovic (Evolution). The story is lucid and gripping for most of its length, until the fantasy takes over, and dreams and reality and the children’s perspectives triumphantly blur. Andrew Osmond
The film was inspired by the true-life kidnapping and murder of Giuseppe Di Matteo, son of a Mafia informant.