REVIEWED - THE KEYS TO THE HOUSE/LE CHIAVI DI CASA: Just before Gianni Amelio's second birthday, his 20-year-old father left home and didn't return for 17 years. In The Keys to the House, Amelio's remarkable new film as director and co-writer, the protagonist - also named Gianni - is a man who becomes a father in his late teens and walks out on his baby son, Paolo, after learning the child had "some problems", writes Michael Dwyer
Paolo's mother has died in childbirth, and her family raises the mentally and physically disabled boy.
The film begins when father and son meet for the first time. Paolo is 15 years old and Gianni takes the boy to a Berlin hospital for rehabilitation exercises. Now settled into adult life, and married with a new baby son, Gianni is ill at ease in the company of the stranger who is his older child - an outgoing, friendly and insatiably curious boy who walks with the aid of a cane and has needed specialised treatment all his life.
Gianni is a mess of confusion and guilt as he attempts to come to terms with abandoning Paolo at birth, with the boy's volatile temperament and his special needs. While they are alone together in a small hotel room far from home, Gianni finally begins to relate to his first child, and to give him the care, affection and respect he deserves.
The Keys to the House carries a dedication in memory of the late Giuseppe Pontiggia, whose semi-autobiographical novel, Born Twice, inspired it. Amelio takes substantial dramatic liberties with this source material - compressing the 30 years covered by the book into just a week, for example - while remaining true to its essence.
In the film, Gianni befriends Nicole, a Frenchwoman attending the same clinic with her severely disabled daughter. In one scene, she is reading a French edition of Born Twice, and she recommends it to Gianni. In another pivotal scene, Nicole tells Gianni: "Prepare yourself for suffering."
This is a moving but honest and unsentimental drama that never shirks from the difficult questions it raises. Nor does it ever attempt to patronise the characters. For the role of Paolo, Amelio eschewed the option of casting an experienced actor and chose instead the engagingly expressive young Andrea Rossi, who has muscular dystrophy and who makes his acting debut in the film.
Kim Rossi Stuart, a young Italian stage and film actor, plays Gianni in a low-key performance that subtly captures all the emotions experienced by this troubled man. The redoubtable Charlotte Rampling is unforgettable in her few scenes as Nicole in this tender, thoughtful drama that lingers in the mind long after the closing credits have rolled.
