To avoid any misunderstanding, the writer considers Respiro, Crialese's second film, to be one of the best Italian films of the new millennium for originality and creativity.

Now, nine years after his last disappointing feature Terraferma, he returns with L'immensità and the result is nothing short of disastrous. We don't know whether it's due to too many irons in the fire, whether it's due to an excess of narrative urgency or a heavy hand of post-production editing, the only fixed point is that the film doesn't hold up.

Certainly also the cumbersome presence of Penelope Cruz in the cast creates confusion in the development of the plot, so much so that the character of the protagonist's mother steals the show with a secondary plot that is not too original, but which however has weight exaggerated. The star's international appeal has done harm without much benefit.

So she struggles to follow the path of the child in the body of a child. Her relationships with the rest of her daughter are barely sketched out and even the analysis of her internal discomfort struggles to emerge. The musical numbers to the tune of Seventies songs by Carrà or Patty Pravo leave the time they find and increase the bundling effect that the film leaves in the viewer.

Passed in competition in Venice and is truly a disappointment. A work that proceeds by accumulation without finding development. It's a shame because it was a work with strong themes, courageous and useful for our country, but it really is a wasted opportunity.