Ovunque proteggimi (Bonifacio Angius, 2018); Italy

Reviewed by William Edwards at the 2019 Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Bonifacio Angius directed a wonderful movie, called “Ovunque proteggimi” poorly translated at the Santa Barbara Film festival as “Wherever you Go”.  Nevertheless, it was a uniquely direct and transparent understanding of a fascinating relationship between an alcoholic singer and a mentally challenged single mother.  What was unique about it was it’s lack of pretense and transparency into the human mind and soul.  Without special effects or subtle narrative thematic progression that is supposed to generate hours of philosophical reflection, this movie’s sole agenda was to make you feel the character’s dilemmas in no uncertain terms, thus making it very appealing to the watcher as much as it was a great reflector of the human condition.

Alessandro Gazale played a washed up singer, shabbily dressed and compulsive with alcohol who gets himself into some mischief and ends up in something of a sanitarium where he meets Francesca Niedda (both actors retained their first names as names of their character) and forms a lasting bond which proceeds throughout the movie.  The narrative adequately reflects a natural progression that occurs in real life – people are simply brought together to meet regardless of the conditions and strange events – in order to not only understand their deepest desires and fears, but to explore a new life entirely.  This is just what the protagonist, who I was fortunate to sit next to in the theatre, showed in the movie.  The transformation of a selfish man to a genuine hero with mature characteristics was ably shown by director and writer Bonifacio Angus as the lead finds himself drawn into the life and indeed, family of this very fascinating woman, wonderfully acted by Francesca Niedda.  Their personalities seemed to be directly opposite when you first saw then together and by the end of the movie, you could see how these two were destined to be together.  Without doubt, this was one of my favorite entries at the Santa Barbara Film Festival and kudos go around to Angius, the actors and all involved in a marvelous slice of real life.