VENICE 2020: The Ties
venice 2020Daniele Luchetti's Lacci (The Ties) will undoubtedly draw comparisons to Noah Baumbach's critically acclaimed Marriage Story in heaps. Granted, both films follow a discourse of unconventional divorce through the lens of its children, but even when Luchetti's film may not succeed where Baumbach's effort does, it is a feature that is nevertheless a strong and often difficult film to bear witness.
There is a lot to commend in Luchetti's drama. Firstly, how the film observes the emotional density and destructive force of divorce is undeniably uncomfortable and honest. Showcasing this story through the eyes of both protagonists, as well as their children, offers an eye-opening account on four fronts with resulting trauma that the film dives deep in conveying. The lack of answers, and moreover the complexity of desire, fuelled against the harmony of family offers a multifaceted insight into the human psyche.
Alba Rohrwacher as Younger Vanda captures this fragility and weight tenfold in a truly encompassing and vulnerable performance. The chaos and instinctively daunting emotional loss is dearly captivating. Coinciding with Luigi Lo Cascio's Younger Aldo, this polarising emotional discourse crafts quite a compelling parallel arc between the two jarring desires. The material at hand is quintessentially brutal, and to see the two diverting arcs and their individual emotional fallout – or lack thereof regarding Lo Cascio's Aldo – makes for a squeamish viewing, but one that constantly feels tentative and gripping.
Made more effective is that Lacci takes a strange and surprising turn with the divorce in question not actually occurring. It is an interesting and unique development that the film takes but, unfortunately, one that feels underwritten and under-explored regarding its gravitas and trauma. The film, quite interestingly, makes an editorial decision half-way through and jumps forward a couple of decades to what is assuming present day. The cut in question from the past to the present from Luchetti and Aël Dallier Vega is quite fabulously conducted and showcases a small dose of style.
That being said, the same can not be said for the edit throughout. Once the cut in question above happens, the film really struggles to craft an organic and simplistic plan to transition from the two-time differences. Made more complex is that the film then tries to engage in two different narratives and perspectives from its main protagonists. On paper, it is an effort to engage in more character depth but to no avail, due to its sheer jarring sensibility and muddled confusion of when and where to cut back and forth to unravel this discourse.
Convicted in the most jarring of manners, Daniele Luchetti's Lacci is, on paper, a promising and inventive feature with a compelling narrative. However, the final product – while not a disaster – does nothing to particular craft a deeply engaging or potentially astonishing piece of cinema.
