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Giorgio Diritti directs Franz Rogowski: this would be enough to arouse interest in “Lubo”, one of the great protagonists of the weekend in theaters.
The Bolognese director, three years after the remarkable “Volevo hidermi” with Elio Germano in the role of the painter Antonio Ligabue, returned behind the camera to tell the life of Lubo, a man, played by the excellent German actor, who in 1939 was called into the Swiss army to defend the national borders from the risk of a German invasion. A short time later he discovers that his wife has died trying to prevent the gendarmes from taking away their three young children, who, as Jenisch, were taken from the family under the national re-education program for street children. Lubo knows that he will no longer have peace until he finds his children and obtains justice.
“Lubo” is a torrential film, a film that lasts three hours and in which different emotions are experienced during the viewing: from suffering to joy, from hope to pain, this feature film takes us on a carousel full of various sensations.
Opened with a remarkable incipit, with the protagonist slowly revealing himself during a beautiful performance, the film thus begins with a symbolic “birth” of a character with whom we immediately empathize and whose misadventures also coincide with the various seasons of his existence.As often happens in the cinema of the talented author of important works such as “The Wind Makes His Tour” and “The Man Who Will Come”, the relationship created between human bodies and the environment that surrounds them is fundamental, as demonstrated by numerous sequences, especially in the initial part.
“Lubo” and the other films of the week
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A carousel of genres
Many genres alternate – from war films to political dramas, passing through melody – in this ambitious and courageous film, both in terms of duration and themes covered: inspired by the novel “The Sower” by Mario Cavatore, “Lubo” it is a film in which the political vocation is felt very strongly in wanting to tell the injustice suffered by those nomadic families whose children were taken away with the excuse of the national re-education program. In fact, Diritti’s film is also a denunciatory film, capable of shaking despite a certain redundancy in the central part which however does not limit the overall involvement. If in itself “Lubo” is a product not to be missed (and which deserves to be seen on big screen), there is also great added value in the intense performance of Franz Rogowski, an actor who had already worked with Italian directors such as Gabriele Mainetti (“Freaks Out”) and Giovanni Abbruzzese (“Disco Boy”): the interpreter German confirms himself as one of the great contemporary European actors with this performance which reaffirms Diritti as one of the best Italian directors in his casting choices and in capturing the faces of those in front of his camera.
Club Zero
Among the most anticipated titles of the week there is also “Club Zero” by Jessica Hausner starring Mia Wasikowska. The Australian actress plays a teacher who, having just been hired in a new exclusive school, imposes her extreme vision in terms of nutrition within a school program she created and aimed at a small number of children. The students, after some doubts, begin to fall under the woman’s charm, not without dangerous consequences. Director of extremely incisive and sharp works such as “Lourdes” and “Little Joe”, the Austrian Jessica Hausner signs a new film with disturbing atmospheres, set almost entirely within the aseptic environments of a phantom elite educational institution. Reasoning on certain paranoia and fanaticism, “Club Zero” is undoubtedly a film capable of reflecting on contemporaneity, but it almost always lacks the right spark to be able to shake as it would like and should do. The risk is that of lapsing into sterile provocation which ends up don’t leave much of an impression: the final result is in fact that of a film that is stronger on paper than in the overall result, too weak to be able to maintain the ambitious initial premises. Much more is to be expected from an author of Hausner’s caliber.