Coming to Italian cinemas on Thursday, August 22, L’Innocenza, the new film by Kore’eda Hirokazu, awarded at the last Cannes Film Festival for Best Screenplay written by Sakamoto Yuji. The music is by Oscar winner Ryuichi Sakamoto, who composed his last soundtrack with L’Innocenza. The cast stars Soya Kurokawa, in the role of the very young Minato, and Mitsuki Takahata, who is his schoolmate Hiro. Sakura Hando plays Minato’s mother Saori, while Eta Nagayama is his teacher, Hori.

Innocence, the plot

The anxiety of the teenager Minato who, from one day to the next, begins to behave strangely without giving any explanation, worries his widowed mother Saori who decides to see clearly and tries to understand what is happening to her son. To do this she goes to school, to understand if the teachers and the principal have any idea of ​​what could be troubling the boy. At school, the woman clashes with the teacher Hori, Minato’s main teacher, about whom gossip circulates that puts him in a bad light, even in front of the very strict principal who, on the other hand, is surrounded by a truly disturbing and defamatory voice. In all this investigating, an accusation of bullying on Minato comes out, but digging further and broadening the view to the points of view of the teacher and the son himself, a very different truth will be discovered, a story of teenagers covered by lies and secrets for fear of social stigma.

Innocence, a poetic and complex film with two kids and the hypocrisy of society as protagonists

Three different points of view on a single story that becomes precisely for this reason three completely different stories from each other. The only truth is the one told in the first person by Minato, the last point of view that surprisingly turns everything or almost everything that the viewer had understood up to that moment, through the eyes of two adults: those of Saori, Minato’s loving and attentive mother, and those of the teacher Hori who first stops at the first appearance then, slowly, also thanks to Saori’s insistence, comes to understand the truth, or at least, the most superficial part of the story that sees Minato and his schoolmate Hiro as protagonists. Bullying, arrogance, fights in class are the surface created above all by social expectations, but underneath, there is a very different truth that is strenuously protected by the protagonist. Once again the Japanese director gives the audience a multi-layered film, complex yet capable of descending, layer after layer, to the essence of human, social and institutional relationships, represented at different levels. A film steeped in humanity but also depth and poetry that warns about false truths, manipulations, chatter and appearances that almost always deceive and reminds us that each individual lives the same situation differently, filters it through his gaze, his feelings, his superstructures and his past experiences and that objectivity is a pure illusion. Minato and Hiro live the story that sees them as protagonists above all sheltered from the gaze of others, showing themselves in a way to the judging society and reserving the “genuineness” and innocence to a place outside of conditioning and fierce judgments and the strongest message of the film seems to be a condemnation of hypocrisy and social pressures, which weigh heavily not only on the two young protagonists but also on all the other protagonists, of all ages and in all roles. All through a story that is profound, sensitive and lyrical.

Rating: 7.5