Per il mio bene (2024)

Giovanna inherited the family business from her father, which deals with the industrial (but artisanal) processing of natural stone. The woman does not have a partner, and although she maintains a close relationship with her mother Lilia and her 15-year-old daughter Alida, it seems that she is unable to build completely sincere bonds with them or to be completely transparent. So when she gets sick, she keeps the situation hidden from the girl, and only talks to her mother because she discovers that the only cure would be an urgent liver transplant from a blood relative in adulthood. But Lilia cannot help her, because... she is not her biological mother. Giovanna discovers that she was adopted and that she has lived a life in the dark about that important information regarding her identity. And she begins a search for her biological mother, the only one who could really save her life. 'Per il mio bene' is an unusual film in the Italian panorama because, despite starting from a melodramatic premise with a high risk of television (and the first scenes struggle a bit to find the necessary tone), it unfolds cinematically in a sober and calm way, working "in levare" and relying on the rigor of its protagonists: Barbora Bobulova in the role of Giovanna, Marie-Christine Barrault - a very welcome return - in that of her biological mother, Sara Ciocca in the role of Alida and Stefania Sandrelli in that of Lilia. Sandrelli performs an act of great generosity in leaving the more substantial role (which she could have easily played herself) to her French colleague: but with a couple of "piercing" expressions she lets Lilia's living pain filter through in witnessing Giovanna's rejection (and illness), as only a great actress can do. However, it is Barrault who towers over the big screen, beautiful in her lonely and angry old age, and Bobulova holds her own, with sweetness and a sense of deep affinity. Ciocca closes this quadrilateral of painful but loving relationships, letting all the adolescent need for truth and affective presence shine through. 'Per il mio bene' is a treatise on motherhood as the ability to act "for the good" of one's children, without sacrificing the right to one's own identity. The excellent screenplay by Monica Zapelli, Pierpaolo De Mejo and Mimmo Verdesca, clear and never insistent, avoids underlining and spares us useless explanations on what we have already understood, also because the images and the acting of the actresses (and actors: there is a splendid cameo by Leo Gullotta, also a very welcome return) speak for themselves, and clearly. Verdesca's direction, at his debut in fictional cinema after some documentaries and supported by the essential editing of Alessio Doglione, is careful and modest, and takes all the time and calm necessary to tell an adult story in which the elderly are finally treated with respect and realism, or as the complex people they have been all their lives - and who do not deserve to be reduced to a single note, mostly ridiculous, in favor of the younger audience (or cast). In a delicate moment of her life, Giovanna needs the person who abandoned her, her biological mother. The precision of the images, the ability to narrate a story full of emotion without ever bordering on gratuitous tears, make Verdesca welcome as a director of fiction, capable of "working the natural stone" that is cinema with grace and competence. A curiosity: the names of two of the protagonists seem to be homages to his previous documentaries, 'Alida' (on Valli) and 'In arte Lilia Silvi' (on the diva of white telephones). 'Per il mio bene' therefore appears as a (further) gesture of gratitude from a man towards the women he observes, and wants to tell, with discretion and solicitude.