Leonora Addio review – Paolo Taviani’s wonderfully lyrical goodbye to his brother

Paolo Taviani, now 90, rose to acclaim as one half of the Taviani brothers, alongside his sibling Vittorio. Leonora Addio, the director's first film since Vittorio’s passing in 2018, is an ineffably strange and mysterious film, clearly rooted in personal resonance – the opening titles include a dedication to his late brother.

The first two-thirds of the film bring us back to immediate post-WWII Italy and the ashes of famed playwright Luigi Pirandello (whose works the brothers have previously adapted, like in their acclaimed 1984 film Kaos). We follow Pirandello’s ashes as they are disinterred from their original resting place in Rome and bought to his native Sicily, to be buried in an excavated stone block.

It is the story, then, of three separate burials. Pirandello’s first, in fascist Italy, the second, as his ashes are moved out of their original urn and into an antique Greek vase for travel, and then a third, as the sculptor tasked with creating his final resting place procrastinates for 15 years. In luscious black and white, we follow the urn’s journey from Rome to Sicily, overseen by an unnamed bureaucrat (Fabrizio Ferracane).

The journey takes in a tumultuous, fragmented Italy where, in the wake of the defeat of Axis powers,  chaos reigns. American soldiers behave as if they own the place, whilst Italians desperately scramble to get home. Yet there are also moments (such as a sensitive scene of young love on a train full of the displaced) that suggest the possibilities of freedom and new beginnings. It’s the vision of a society waking up from its own worst nightmare.

Perhaps there’s something here about Pirandello’s own relationship to fascism – once a member of Mussolini’s party, he also tore up his membership and declared them hostile to culture, though still remained tied to the regime. Yet he remains a noted figure of 20th century literature, his works regularly updated for the stage, his legacy fragmenting in the hands of the Tavianis, themselves lifelong socialists whose works have carried on the predominantly left-wing legacy of Italian Neorealist cinema that emerged in the 40s and 50s.

These contradictions deepen the film, whose direct meanings are hard to parse, always tantalisingly out of reach. Then, two-thirds in, the story of Pirandello’s journey back to Sicily ends, and we leap into a colour adaptation of his short story, The Nail, about a teenage boy killing a young girl in early 20th century Brooklyn.

Here, the acting falls apart a little – there’s something stilted about the line deliveries in English, and this brief adaptation has a distinct made-for-TV vibe. And yet it’s impossible not to applaud such an audacious narrative choice which still has time to fold in further flashbacks to the earlier story, as well as archival footage and snippets from the span of 20th century Italian cinema. One can’t help but swoon with the denseness of the image-making here. Such a sweeping narrative shift is given the lightest touch in Taviani’s hands, as if he is making the grandest statements about 20th century Italy in the softest, most understated whisper.

In doing so, the director makes a direct challenge to the viewer and our expectations of the film – by leaving everything so tantalisingly unresolved and evidently personal, Leonora Addio reaches beyond just basic narrative filmmaking into something wonderfully lyrical and poetic.

Leonora Addio was screened as part of the Berlinale Film Festival 2022. A UK release date is yet to be announced.