«A film about the rape of a little girl and the faults of the parents, so topical»- Corriere.it

Talking about “Physical Education” by Stefano Cipani (in cinemas from 16), the key question is asked by Sergio Rubini who is one of the protagonists: «How much is a parent ready to do in order to preserve the life of his own child, which is the reflection of his life, and therefore how ready is he to save himself?”

The story: the parents of three pupils are summoned by the principal of a provincial middle school, Giovanna Mezzogiorno. Their sons are responsible for raping a little girl. The gymnasium, where the meeting takes place, is transformed into an improvised courtroom and becomes a metaphor for society, sinister shivers shake its walls and surround the representative of the institutions, the principal, like a lunar veil. A verbal aggression is unleashed just as deadly as the physical one, with irreparable consequences. It is the culture of the herd, where the herd is not that of rabid or dishonest young people but that of adults.

Claudio Santamaria and Raffaella Rea are lovers, they are wealthy and rather conservative parents. Angela Finocchiaro and Sergio Rubini are married, the «best», more open, progressive, liberal couple. They have adopted a son, who is black. The four bring out their cursed part, the one on the edge, which is in each of us. There is no sympathy with the victim, none of them ask how he is. She is sad that she was the girl who wanted things to get worse: «Remember the Cucchi case, where the victim sold weed, but this didn’t justify anything. Those parents who fill their mouths with freedom are perched on their own positions», says Rubini with his broad gaze. A fresco on hypocrisy that crosses social classes, a survival manual. But here is the comparison with today: «Authority is questioned, as if it were no longer recognised, whereas for the generation preceding mine, who are from 1959, the figure of the teacher was untouchable, because it coincided with the state. Today we live in a transformed world where there is populism, there is chaos. A kind of tower of Babel. And all this coincides with the story of the letter from Florence after the beating in his school, which provoked a reprimand from the Minister of Education ».

After the beating of the right-wing squads, the principal «had the task of being the principal, and if according to the Constitution we are a Republic founded on anti-fascism, she did nothing but refer to the Constitutional Charter. If she is reprimanded by the minister, it is an identical situation to the film and to the principal that she summons the parents of those kids who have committed an ignoble act, ready to do anything to shut her mouth. It is the same case of the minister. If institutions are questioned, populism and chaos take their course, and they can be applied to anything; it is the absence of rules that turns into a danger». For Rubini, the film has many psychological, social, political interpretations: «How parents, teachers, schools have changed; how society and institutions have changed and how we relate to institutions. This approach also has other effects. If they are underpaid and abused, why should they be good teachers? The principal of the film who empathizes with the victim symbolically represents the suffering of the institutions put to the test and desperately weakened. If one principal feels attacked, there will be a thousand principals afraid of being reprimanded. And they will be silent.” The school is a microcosm with rules: «At school we teach civic sense, being together; the perimeter of what can be done is defined. The school is the place of politics, and it is bad politics that creates a bad school. Indeed, it is the nursery of politics, the place where the best politicians should be born».

The film is financed by two young producers, Arturo Paglia and Isabella Cocuzza. Sergio Rubini says: «We talk about zoom and smart working, but the pandemic is over. We are heading towards isolation, the spaces of sociality are in crisis and consequently cinema is in crisis. Which has become mere business, with the same tax relief granted to anyone. The result is that films are made quickly and the quality has dropped, not everyone is well-finished and not everyone gets out. They end up on the platforms, which are colonizing us, because most of the proposals come to us from abroad and the Italian ones, in order to be sold elsewhere, must speak a hybrid language that is required of us by algorithms. Many companies have sold abroad and it doesn’t matter that their directors remain Italian. I hope we can dwell on a bit of healthy cultural sovereignty in the mold of French chauvinism. It is true that there is a lot of work and that taxes are paid in our country, but a country cannot limit itself to taxes: it must invest. All this does not coincide with our identity, which is compromised. It’s an explosive mixture. Angelopoulos said: there is nothing more international than the provincial. Tax credit cannot be given to everyone in the same way. One thing is our story with criteria of originality, another is the remake of a very famous film shot in Italy by a large foreign production. Help must go to those who risk the most.

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