“The Last Night of Love”, an Italian noir with Pierfrancesco Favino at the Berlinale

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As the 73rd edition of the Berlin Film Festival draws to a close, Italian cinema is once again the protagonist with “The Last Night of Love”, the new film by Andrea Di Stefano with Pierfrancesco Favino as the main actor.
The famous actor plays the role of Franco Amore, a man who, just the night before his retirement, will find himself investigating a murder.

Throughout his life Franco has served the state with pride and justice: he has never shot a man and has always believed in honesty, but during that night, the last of his service, he will question everything.

Set in today’s Milan, the film makes the city of Milan a co-protagonist, starting with the beautiful aerial shot with which the film opens. Playing with a narrative structure and many stylistic features typical of noir cinema – from the choice of a long flashback to the representation of the characters on stage – Andrea Di Stefano gives life to a product with a decidedly conventional plot and with various script passages that are not always credible, but which still manage to remain in the background compared to the numerous advantages that this operation brings with it.

An exciting journey at the end of the night

Having reached his third feature film, after “Escobar” in 2014 and “The Informer” in 2019, Andrea Di Stefano signs the film of his definitive stylistic maturity: “L’ultima notte di Amore” is in fact a really well shot product, with a incisive editing and highly refined aesthetics, as demonstrated by the last, remarkable shot. Thanks to this audiovisual strength (the soundtrack is also excellent) the director manages to give life to an exciting product capable of keeping the pace high from beginning to end, reaching its climax in the long sequence of the firefight. Despite the twists and turns are largely predictable, it is a film that is followed with great pleasure, effective in giving enviable entertainment. Also thanks to the good work of a cast in which the excellent performance of Favino stands out, perfectly believable in a role that is anything but simple. It should be noted that the film, presented in the Berlinale Special Gala section, will be released in our cinemas Thursday say 9 March.

The walls of Bergamo

Also in relation to the Italian presence in Berlin, “Le mura di Bergamo” should also be mentioned, a documentary by Stefano Savona presented in the Encounters section. It is a film capable of shaking, which takes us back to the nightmare that the Lombard city experienced in March 2020: the pandemic that has scourged the whole world has raged against Bergamo in a ruthless way. This documentary retraces those deserted streets, that terror that thickened day after day, those unforgettable rows of coffins outside the hospitals. The doctors, the nurses , ordinary people who have been confronted with that tragedy tell their point of view in a product that is truly capable of making us think. Stefano Savona continues his excellent cinematographic journey, after the equally touching “La strada dei Samouni” (2018), and confirms himself as an im bearer of contemporary Italian cinema.