Spring. The review of the film by Damiano Michieletto

The characteristics of the sports drama are therefore all there: a protagonist with great talent still unexploded, a trauma to deal with, a master who definitively ignites the passion and the opportunity to transform the obsession with sport (in this case with the instrument) into redemption. Primavera so it seems to have as models Rocky, Every damn Sunday, What a blow if you meet the “Bears” and, why not, Whiplashanother work in which the obsession with music takes on the characteristics of a sports film. The choice to resort to a similar structure, made by Damiano Michieletto himself and co-writer Ludovica Rampoldi, has its own raison d’etre, which must be identified in the need to clearly expose a world that is both complex and distant from the viewer’s imagination – that of early eighteenth-century Venice, its musical context in general and the Ospedale della Pietà in particular – through a “plot” that is immediately recognizable by the general public.

However, such a codified story (on which the necessary variations are not built to make it unique among many similar ones) shows how the narrative element has almost been sacrificed in favor of the aesthetic one. In fact, predictable writing characterized by characters that are not exactly memorable is accompanied by a good level historical reconstruction – having said that there cannot be an aesthetic system that can fully compensate for shortcomings in writing. The costumes by Maria Rita Barbera are particularly excellent, worthy of even higher caliber productions and probably more interesting looking than Primavera.

Also worth mentioning is the great Michele Riondino, whose interpretation of the frail genius Antonio Vivaldi is of such a level as to create an all too clear gap with the not so brilliant performances of the rest of the cast, from Tecla Insolia to Stefano Accorsi. However, Riondino now has the consistency of the great actors and it would be nice to see him, after the excellent appearances in “his” Laf building it’s not The valley of smileswithin a film capable of definitively consecrating him as one of the most important of his generation.

Director: Damiano Michieletto
Cast: Tecla Insolia, Michele RIondino, Fabrizia Sacchi, Andrea Pennacchi, Valentina Bellè, Stefano Accorsi, Alessandro Bressanello, Miko Jarry, Hildegard De Stefano
Distribution: Warner Bros. Pictures Italia
Duration: 110′
Origin: Italy, 2025

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