Leopardi

Il giovane favoloso

Handsome, moving period biopic of legendary Italian 19th century poet Giacomo Leopardi.

Image
Image

Director Mario Martone
Producers Carlo Degli Esposti, Patrizia Massa, Nicola Serra
Screenwriters Mario Martone, Ippolita Di Majo
With Elio Germano, Michele Riondino, Massimo Popolizio
Italy 2014
135 mins
Sales Rai Trade

Giacomo Leopardi is one of the most important and influential poets in Italian literary history. Director Mario Martone’s film, a scrupulously researched and cinematically staged period biopic, gives us the full sweep of the restless and often terribly unhappy events of Leopardi’s life, set within the turbulent context of early 19th-century Italian society, politics and literature. However this is no academic exercise – it is a powerful, moving search for identity and artistic self-expression by a brilliant misfit, memorably played by Elio Germano (My Brother is Only Child, As God Commands).

Adrian Wootton