By Hitomi Tanaka

The Italian film, The Son's Room, received the Golden Palm award, which is the award for best movie at the 2001 Cannes movie festival. Nanni Moretti is the director of this movie and he stars in this movie as Giovanni, the father and psychoanalyst. Also, he received an award at 1994 Cannes movie festival for best director with his movie Dear Diary, which was based on his struggle against illness.

This movie draws the life of a family living in a port town in Italy. The family consists of four people; a father, a mother, a daughter and a son. They spend peaceful and happy days together, but suddenly they lose their son, Andrea(Giuseppe Sanfelice), because of an accident. Also, Paola(Laura Morante), who is the mother of this family, and Giovanni, refuse to sleep in the same room because they can't repair their relationship. The daughter, Irene(Jasmine Trinca), is charged with the burden to support her parents emotionally and she worries about that, and it causes her to break up with her boyfriend. However, the three bereaved people who were left by Andrea get over their difficulties and they get back to their happy life.

Nanni Moretti doesn't like an elaborate style of making images, so he made a film using techniques suited to the story, without using any special effects. It's like Nanni Moretti has created his own world. Therefore, we can feel the warmth of family and the sorrow of lose a son more from this movie.

I suppose that the most important thing in this movie is that the father, Giovanni, is a psychoanalyst. On the day Andrea's accident happened, Giovanni and Andrea were going to jog, but Giovanni gets a call from his patient and he has to see his patient immediately. Therefore, Andrea goes diving with his friends instead and he loses his life. Giovanni starts to think that Andrea's accident happened because Giovanni went to see his patient, so he blames himself. Also, whenever he meets that patient, he remembers Andrea and Giovanni feels angry at the patient. He goes to talk about his feelings to another psychoanalyst, but he eventually decides to quit his job. I think psychoanalysts are always calm and have to listen to their patients carefully. However, Giovanni starts to cry when he listens to his patients and he is consoled by one patient after he lost his son. As mentioned earlier, a person who is a psychoanalyst lost his son and he experienced the same problems, like his patient. The process helps to the express father's sorrow and bitterness of losing his son and draws us into the movie.

The story revolves around the scene after Andrea dies. The family realize that Andrea had a girlfriend, so they will meet with her. The girlfriend goes to the family's home bringing a photo with her. The photo was taken by Andrea in his room and he was smiling in a way the family had never seen before. When Giovanni looked at the photo he realized that Andrea had become an adult without his knowing it. In the movie, it was not clearly described but implied that Giovanni finds his answer for the sadness of the lose of his son by seeing Andrea as a full-fledged adult.

Nanni Moretti, who is the director and acts the main part of this movie, said, "A room is a place where people can live alone, people can face themselves, people can realize something become obvious about themselves and people can keep secret about it." His idea was to describe Andrea as a youth who wants to be like an adult but can't yet. Also, this is probably the reason why this movie is titled "The Son's Room."

This movie ended with a scene in which the family takes Andrea's girlfriend to a place where she can hitchhike, which happens to be by the ocean, and everyone goes to look at it. The audience might think " Is this movie over?" but we can clearly find the warmth of family and sadness of the lost son in this movie. People who are used to Hollywood movies might feel unsatisfied, but there is a particular mood about Italian movies, and they may attract many people. I hope that this movie provides an opportunity for more people to enjoy Italian movies.