“Hello Baby”: Edgardo Pistone’s debut at the cinema is not to be missed
If today there is a city at the center of Italian audiovisual storytelling, that city is Naples. Not only in valuable pieces by authors such as Paolo Sorrentino or Mario Martone. But also in the most popular story, the one intended for commercial use. Let’s think about how many films and TV series set in the Neapolitan capital have been released in the last year: Parthenope, Hey Joe by Claudio Giovannesi, Naples – New York by Gabriele Salvatores, The Children’s Train by Cristina Comencini on Netflix, the Uonderbois series on Disney+ . Without forgetting the inexhaustible phenomenon of Mare Fuori, niches such as the gothic horror Mimì – The Prince of Darkness by Brando De Sica, or experiments that cross the border between media such as The Secret of Liberato by Francesco Lettieri.
Also Hello babyEdgardo Pistone’s feature debut awarded as Best First Film at the Rome Film Festival 2024 (ex aequo with Bound in Heaven by Huo Xin), is rooted in the fabric of Naples, but in the negative. We need to start from the luminous black and white of Rosario Cammarota’s photography, which makes it a desaturated city suspended in an unplaceable temporal boundary – or always placeable, always true, always in the present. A choice aimed almost also at geographical abstraction; that we are in the city of Campania can only be understood from the use of dialect in the mouths of the very young interpreters.
Hello Child: The plot and themes of the film
Because Pistone resumes and places himself in a Naples far from identifiable and mapable places, perhaps only with the exception of a shot of a few moments at the end. It shuns the folkloristic, it shuns cacophony, it shuns what the director calls the “Naples trend”. He removes the colors and remains in the dimension of the neighborhood (his, the Rione Traiano where Pistone grew up) where adolescence in the wild struggles, forced by the urgency of becoming an adult. Here, the function of the true dialect of Hello Child is that of a language that instantly fills the gap that separates the faces covered in acne from the actions that the characters perform, which mediates too quickly between the stage of childhood and the world of adults.
This is a film which, after all, in the screenplay by Pistone and Ivan Ferone has the typical structure of coming of age, of the training story. But disenchanted: despite everything being wrapped in a bubble, it is never a dream, but almost a cage. An external imposition: you are here and you will never be elsewhere. Then the nineteen-year-old Attilio (Marco Adamo, film-like) faces the realization that he has to abandon his time playing games, billiards and summer swimming at the seaside. He understands this upon the return of his father, released from prison, a figure who escapes and continually postpones the confrontation – here too there is a piece by Pistone: Attilio’s father is played by Luciano Pistone, Edgardo’s real father.
A man who denies himself the responsibilities of a parent and a husband, and who in this denial acts indirectly with a push that leads the protagonist to end up working for a local criminal. This is how Attilio meets Anastasia (Anastasia Kaletchuk, another incredible face), a very young prostitute who the boy is tasked with protecting during her street work shifts. And, obviously, he falls in love with her, promising to run away together. Even if Ciao Bambino is not a fairy tale, as his friends also tell him. How can Attilio think that everything will be fine?
The work of an already mature author
What is most surprising about the film is how Pistone works on the paradoxical dichotomy in which he breaks up his story, with on one side what he talks about – where the adult male puts in check and feeds on everything and everyone – and on the other the the way he talks about it. Already awarded best director at the Critics’ Week at the Venice Film Festival for his short film The Flies in 2020, in which there was the germ of what would later be Ciao Bambino, the Neapolitan author confirms his first appointment with cinema to know what and how to do it.
His debut is a work of great grace and directorial maturity, which mixes together the lyrical and the sanguine. The sacred of classical music and the profane of popular music, which accompany the film throughout its hour and a half. He can be accused, at most, of moving along the lines of the archetype where the tormentor (even if he is a pawn, that’s what Attilio is after all) imagines himself as a savior. But Hello Child does not delude himself or delude himself, he does not leave things unfinished and he does not console. His are strong feelings, as are the outcomes that the film calls for.
Rating: 7.5