Review: Forever – Film Review

The positive outweighs the negative

Rather than “sweeping” the few negative sides of this film, it is probably better to address them first. First there is an opening scene that we will not understand until the very end of the film, with a camera which slowly slips through the middle of the shelves of a library and, in the background, cries for help in coming from a childish voice. Well, after all, why not, but we are still puzzled by this scene! Then, we immediately switch to the party organized on the terrace of Alessandro and Arturo’s apartment, a very confused scene, with very many characters. This confusion is probably intentional, but we can regret not understanding more quickly the links between these different characters. Finally, later in the film, we will be confronted with two scenes which give off, at the very least, a slight scent of awkwardness: first of all, the very artificial paralleling of two disputes taking place at the same time, near the one on the other, an argument between Alessandro and Arturo, an argument between brother and sister. Then, a scene that sees Arturo break down emotionally in front of the two children and tell them, when they didn’t ask for so much, all the intimacy of the couple he forms with Alessandro. Frankly, despite the excellent performance ofand Stefano Accorsi, the interpreter of Arturo, the context of this scene also makes it very artificial.

Fortunately, there is everything else which, in the end, makes the film exude great interest and a lot of emotion without flirting with pathos: the questions discreetly offered to the spectators on what the trio may have experienced Alessandro, Annamaria, Arturo in the past, the phenomena of infidelity in a couple, the toxic role that Elena, Annamaria’s mother, had in her daughter’s education, the ability that this same Elena has to conceal its cruelty, the dignified behavior of two very young children faced with a particularly difficult situation, the different ways of behaving in the face of a serious illness, whether for the patient or for his friends, the painting of the group of friends of Arturo and Alessandro with, in particular, this very delicate way of showing the Alzheimer’s of one of them. And then, there is also, there is above all the naturalness with which the director shows that the problems that a couple can encounter are in no way linked to the way they are made up. Filmmaker assumed homosexuality, Ferzan Ozpetek has in fact the habit of not getting into the game of pure and hard militancy and claiming: its characters are part of the wealthy classes and they seek only one thing: integration into society.