Nostalgia review – sublime performances elevate a messy but affecting crime story

As is always all too evident in both the private and political spheres, nostalgia can be a dangerous thing, an attachment to the past blinding us to the necessities of the present until we sleepwalk into calamity. It’s this sort of nostalgia that lends Mario Martone’s new film its title, a study in just how swiftly your past can reclaim you, no matter how far away you thought you’d got or how long you’ve seemed to escape it. A slow, thoughtful tale of petty crime and soured friendship, its thrills may be a little too sparse, but sublime acting carries Nostalgia over the finish line.

At the mercy of his nostalgia is Felice (Pierfrancesco Favino), who has returned to his home city of Naples to visit his aged, dying mum after a 40-year absence working in Cairo, where he’s become more comfortable speaking Arabic than Italian and converted to Islam. With a full life waiting for him back in Cairo, it seems as if Felice will be able to resist the entrancement of his old stomping grounds, but it’s not long before he’s being pulled back in to the seedy alleys and large Catholic communities that defined his childhood.

It’s in this opening 25 minutes of Felice relearning his love for Naples (which is Martone’s own native city) that Nostalgia is at its strongest, following him on a tour of his old streets, instantly familiar to him despite his decades away, captured beautifully thanks to gorgeous cinematography and a sparingly-used but evocative score. Favino conveys all his bittersweet reminiscing perfectly and wordlessly – we feel the memories wash over Felice just as he does, while the Super-8 style flashback sequences grant the Naples of the past a warmly mythic glow. Each new location seems to bring a new memory, but Favino never overplays it, and his phenomenal yet understated performance is the foundation upon which Martone can build Nostalgia.

He’s never better, though, than in the scenes with Felice’s mother Teresa (Aurora Quattrochi, also fantastic). Their initial reunion is profoundly moving, and the moments in which Felice expresses his frustration at the decisions she’s made in his absence (most notably selling off her valuable apartment to live in a dingy basement flat) feel piercingly real. Once the plot kicks off in earnest, though, things do get less interesting, the crime saga elements muscling in and all of a sudden making everything much more formulaic and predictable.

See, when Felice fled Naples at 15 after his youthful criminality got the better of him, he left behind his best friend Oreste (Tommaso Ragno), who since became one of Naples’s most notorious and violent gangsters. Their bond was bordering on the romantic, and this perceived betrayal has clearly wounded and fuelled Oreste to turn into the monster that terrorises their old neighbourhoods. Upon learning of Felice’s return, firebrand local priest Don Luigi (Francesco Di Leva) recruits him in the anti-Oreste crusade and the transition from slice-of-life character study to gang thriller is not a smooth one.

There are still a few great moments to be found here, especially in the first real reunion between Felice and Oreste, which is brilliantly performed by both parties, but there’s also a lot of wheel-spinning, leading to a mostly unsatisfying ending. It’s an unfortunate end to what starts out as a truly fascinating story, led by one of the year’s most quietly excellent star performances.

Nostalgia is released in UK cinemas on 17 February.