A fragile boy struggling with the alcohol tunnel and the stubbornness of a father who never abandons him, even when understanding and remaining next to him appears more and more difficult, are at the center of “La Casa degli Sogardi”, previewed at the Rome Film Festival and arriving in the room from Thursday 10 April. The film, based on the book by Daniele Mencarelli, marks the debut to the direction of Luca Zingaretti who carves out for him the beautiful part of a father of great humanity. The protagonist, Marco, is instead played by the talented Gianmarco Facchini. In the cast we also find, among others: Federico Tocci (Giovanni), Chiara Celotto (Paola), Alessio Moneta (Claudio), Riccardo Lai (Luciano).

The House of the looks, the plot

Marco is a twenty year old all bones and pain, broken by the death of the mother and by an uncommon sensitivity he cannot manage, a gift that guides his hand when he writes his poems and at the same time a condemnation that leads him perpetually to wander on the road to self -destruction. Alcohol is his refuge, his escape route from a reality that hurts too much, and he resorts to us constantly and abundantly, sinking into a spiral that brings him daily one step away from the abyss.

To look at him while he makes himself a slaughter meat there is the father. A man home and work from Tramviere, who tries as he can save his son: remaining next to him, trying in every way to shake him, without ever leaving his hand. Even when it would be human to give and let that soul in pain go to his destiny, Marco’s father is there, determined not to give up, armed with patience and love. When, for the umpteenth time, the man is forced to rush to the hospital where his son ended up following a car accident due to a colossal drunk, he decides to act trying to break his days immersed in suffering and self -harm, finding him a job.

Marco’s new work, in a cleaning cooperative within the Bambin Gesù Pediatric Hospital, gives a shock to the boy’s life, a sense of his days, immerses him in a reality that is more complex than what he knows remaining perpetually folded over himself. A reality made of a working group that welcomes him, of painful stories as his, of the new awareness that life is not easy for anyone but can always reserve beautiful surprises, if he looks up. The route to abandon the old road, however, will prove to be Arduo and, as always happens in these cases, dotted with results achieved and repercussions, up to the shock that changes everything.

The House of the looks: a story of fragility and paternal love

For his first, successful, test as a director of a feature film, Luca Zingaretti chooses a touching story and brings us into the relationship between a loving father but who does not know where to get his hands with a particular son, and this boy so sensitive and lost, in search of help to survive days marked by the pain of the loss and fallen in a black hole from which he does not seem to come and want to come out.

The House of the looks is a frank and human story of a complex situation in which the sufferings of a son also destroys the father who, however, never shows up, runs every time this boy combines another, looks at him with the broken heart while he passes out on the floor crashed by alcohol, pushes him to get out of the shell, looks at him from afar while he tries, falls and gets up and then falls back. A character who exudes love, even if he says only the necessary words.

The protagonist of the film, however, is Marco, Marcolino, who really in his twenty years seems to be still a lost child, a dreamer broken by reality, who vents by writing rhymes and putting one Shottino after another until he finds a dangerous and false peace. The interpretation of Gianmarco Facchini is poignant and his gaze is capable of digging a hole in the heart of the spectator, and not only in the moments when you sail from tears and blushed with drinking. However, the whole film is also a story about how human relationships, even in the most difficult situations, can be true salvation. Marco’s colleagues immediately become a new point of reference for him, that his errors risk making him lose.

The place where the boy finds himself having to spend his days, a pediatric hospital, opens his eyes on the sufferings of the world, of which he does not have a monopoly. A shock therapy that puts, slowly, all on the motorbike, opening his gaze and giving him the courage to accept the reality he considered unacceptable. All narrated with sobriety and measure, avoiding every useless pietism or delay, but not sweetening anything and arriving straight to the heart of a story like many others, and precisely for this reason important to tell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo9vpw41mz8

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