An unconventional and profound story of motherhood, through two parallel and realistic experiences. Two women with parallel destinies, who cross paths when they become mothers. There is all this in “Beloved”, the film by Elisa Amoruso, based on the novel by Ilaria Bernardini who wrote the screenplay. The film is in cinemas from Thursday 16 October and stars Miriam Leone (Maddalena) and Tecla Insolia (Nunzia), both excellent protagonists, together with Stefano Accorsi in the part of a man who is also ignited by the desire for fatherhood.

“Beloved”, the plot

Nunzia is a 19-year-old student away from home who came to Rome from the province to graduate and make her dreams come true. A journey full of energy and hope that changes abruptly when the girl realizes she is pregnant. Nunzia, however, immediately decides that it is not the time for her to become a mother and keeps her pregnancy hidden from all the people who know her, abandoning the apartment she shared with her friends and moving to the home of an elderly blind woman where she decides to spend the last months of gestation and then be able to continue her life as if nothing had happened after giving birth. Maddalena, on the other hand, is a fulfilled woman, a wealthy engineer, happily married to a man she loves. In her life, however, there is a secret pain, which only she and her husband know: despite wanting it, Maddalena is unable to become a mother. After yet another failed attempt, the two spouses decide to try the adoption route, but Maddalena does not completely give up on the idea of ​​a pregnancy, an obsession for which she is even willing to put her health at risk.

“Beloved” two parallel destinies that tell two sides of motherhood

Elisa Amoruso, with her new film “Beloved” delves into a delicate and complex theme, often told in a stereotyped way, which is that of motherhood. It does so by immersing itself in two lives of women who are poles apart in terms of age, character, experience and social position. Nunzia, the student who gets pregnant by mistake, played by the excellent Tecla Insolia, doesn’t want to know about the child that is about to be born, she welcomes the news of its existence like a boulder that blocks her path towards a life that has yet to begin. Through her, we also follow the struggle of a young woman who would have the right to choose whether or not to bring a new life into the world and finds it difficult to exercise it. We see her listen to unsolicited judgments and advice, suffer pressure and finally have to go home to carry on with a pregnancy she doesn’t want.

In another part of the city, which could be on the other side of the world, there is Maddalena, a fulfilled woman who secretly experiences the excruciating suffering of not being able to become a mother, for herself but also for her loving and understanding husband who stands by her and shares this pain. Maddalena becomes stubborn to the point of putting herself at risk for a child who doesn’t want to come, she does everything, but when she manages to get one step away from becoming a mother, she finds herself having to face her painful family journey and an abyss of unexpected fears opens up before her. With Maddalena’s inner journey, Elisa Amoruso intelligently recounts a part of motherhood that we practically never see told, the one in which becoming a mother passes through the resolution of the knots accumulated as children, and it also happens to Nunzia, while giving birth, when she is asked about the “father” and she thinks of her own, not of the child who is arriving.

It is just one of the elements that reveal the depth with which this film, shot with the eye, hand, head and experience of a woman, takes the viewer into one of the great mysteries of life, which is however also an experience of bodies, of the psyche, of material conditions and relational balances. A theme explored here with a delicacy that finally does not give up complexity and therefore does not judge but tries to go beneath the surface and the stereotypes.

Rating: 6.7

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