A decade has passed since the launch of the excellent CinemaItaliaUK initiative and it returns for another season with Riccardo Milani’s Un mondo a parte/A World Apart. This reunites the director with Antonio Albanese after their collaborations on Mom or Dad?, Like a Cat on a Highway (both 2017), and Thank You Guys (2021), the latter of which also had a classroom setting, albeit in a prison rather than a picturesque town in the Abruzzo.
Detesting the kids he teaches at the rough Alberto Moravia School in the outskirts of Rome, Michele Cortese (Antonio Albanese) jumps at the opportunity to make a temporary transfer to Institute Cesidio Gentile, a school in the southern hamlet of Rupe (population 378) that was named after Jurico the shepherd poet. Hoping his new students will be receptive to his ideas on climate change and sustainability, Michele is taken aback when his car is snowed in and he has to be rescued by Principal Agnese (Virginia Raffaele), as watching wolves howl in the nearby woods.
Michele is greeted at the door by the wizened Nunzio (Sergio Saltarelli) and the youthfully enthusiastic Maria Antonietta (Alessandra Barbonetti), who whisper to Agnese that he won’t last a month. Unfortunately, this is a common problem with substitutes at the school, which teaches 6-10 year-olds in a single classroom, as there are so few kids in a backwater that struggles to retain its residents that the local education authority is keen to close it down.
There are only seven pupils in their blue pullovers, but they are well versed in dealing with temps and give Michele a crash course in Jurico, the history of the school, and how lessons work with three age bands in one group. Quirina (Donatella La Cesa) and Titina (Bianca Maria Macro) are inseparable, even though their fathers are rival mayoral candidates for the right and left. The fathers of Aniceto (Gianmarco Borsa) and Concezio (Guglielmo Casale) are also at loggerheads, but Filomena (Solidea Pistilli) is happy that her mother drives the school bus. Sabatino (Andrea Decina Di Pirro) is the quiet one and while Cesidio (Enzo De Sanctis) may prefer the local dialect to Italian, he’s something of a computer whizz.
Over lunch, Agnese explains that she still keeps an eye on her alumni when they need a hand and she asks Michele to cover her lesson while she pops out. He introduces the class to ecology and the idea that the planet can be saved before supper and Quirina explains it at the dinner table to her right-wing father, who promptly complains to Agnese.
Shown to his lodgings by Nunzio, Michele is baffled by the local dialect and spends a cold night with wolves howling outside because he’s too proud to admit that he doesn’t know how to light the stove. He’s just as clueless in a sex education lesson the following day, as Agnese outlines the various gender identities and Michele gets embarrassed when Titina points out that out of all the options, only he and Agnese can have babies. When he pays a call on Filomena’s mother, he finds her milking the sheep and he gets his shoes covered in manure, which is still reeking when he returns to school in time to upset Titana’s parents by encouraging their son to work the land.
After Cesidio calls round to show him how to light his stove, Michele goes to the nearby town of Pescasseroli to get some boots and a warm coat. He takes the class outside to listen to birdsong, but they know the calls better than he does - although they’re impressed by his cricket impression. Saddened by the numerous abandoned buildings around the village, Michele promises the children that the school will never close because their futures are important. When he asks what they want to be, however, he is dismayed when they all say ‘YouTuber’.
Saddened by the kids all being so resigned to the school’s closure, Michele tries to broach the subject with Agnese when they visit Dulio (Duilio Antonucci), one of the few young people to have stayed and tried to make a go of the family farm. She s pleased that he has been smitten by the village, but reluctant to discuss the subject. However, he follows her when she drives into the hills and finds her in the ruins of Sperone, the school from the time Rupe was thriving and she recalls the sadness she felt at its closure due to dwindling numbers. She had vowed this would never happen again, but she has been told that Cesidio Gentile will close its doors in June.
They book an appointment with Superintendent Luigia (Franca Di Cicco), who tells them that it’s all about numbers and notes there hasn’t been a baby boom since Italy won the World Cup in 2006. She tells them they need four new names before the registration deadline and Agnese is concerned that Gaetano (Corrado Oddi), the principal at Castel Romito, and local mayor Ezechia (Sergio Meogrossi) will gloat if they get to take over her students. On seeing Ukrainian refugees arriving in Italy, however, Michele has an idea and Agnese is all in favour of rounding up a few families to boost their tally. She also sends Nunzio and Maria Antonietta to the Maghrebi camp at La Fucino to see if they can find any school age kids and she warns them not to let Ezechia see what they are doing or he’ll try to poach them.
Having secured the support of the mayor, the police chief, the local tourist co-ordinator, and the parish priest, Agnese and Michele make ready to find some Ukrainians. Ezechia tells his cousin not to clear the roads with his snowplough so that they can’t get to the town, but he ignores the order as he’s tired of being told what to do. While Nunzio finds a boy in La Fucino, Agnese gets three Ukrainians and the class agrees to welcome them if it means saving the school.
The brass band plays as the minibus pulls up and the new children take their places at the desks added to the classroom. All goes well, but Michele overhears Agnese arguing with her philandering husband on the phone and the glance they exchange suggests they are starting to have feelings for one another. These increase when Michele dives into the reservoir when Concezio’s sister jumps off the bridge after a row with her parents and - when one of the Ukrainian families is lured away by Ezechia - he hits upon the idea of claiming that Sabatino has a learning disability because the district is compelled to keep the school open for students with special needs. The village vet signs him off so that all is legal and above board.
Distraught to hear that approval for Sabatino’s case will be down to Gaetano, Agnese and Michele wind up in bed together after it snow heavily and she can’t get home. Arriving next morning, they are surprised to find that approval has been granted and Cesidio admits hacking into Gaetano’s e-mail and appending the medical certificate he had deliberately left off. Ezechia is furious with him for blundering, but Agnese is delighted by Cesidio’s ingenuity, as someone with the founder’s name has saved the school.
Months pass and the sun shines on a nature ramble in the hills. Michele breaks the news that his temporary appointment ends the next day. He’s given a guard of honour by staff, parents, and students, who all rush to hug him. As he drives away, however, and sees Duilio on his tractor and building work ongoing at the abandoned gym and factory. Moreover, he sees the beauty of the hills, with the sheep, deer, bears, and wolves and comes back to tell Agnese and the class that he’s staying. The camera turns to the window and the fields below, where Cesidio Gentile is watching his sheep and he wanders into the distance (with one of his poems being recited in voiceover), as his school is in safe hands - for now.
So many films about teachers centre on uncommon outsiders who seek acceptance, gain trust, and inspire students who have been repudiated by everyone else. Riccardo Milani doesn’t stray far from the tried and tested here. But it’s the institution rather than the individuals that is being written off and this allows Milani to explore the cultural as well as the socio-economic effects of the depopulation of the Italian countryside. He also considers the national response to the ongoing migrant crisis, as well as the status of special needs students in the education system. Yet, these are rather tacked on to flesh out the core idea, as the action become less a story than a case study, in which serial problems arise and have to be surmounted.
Fortunately, Milani hits the Ealing sweet spot in an underdog tale that is made all the more appealing by the savvy of the students, who wind up teaching Michele as much as he does them. In truth, his character is somewhat sketchy, as Milani settles for exploiting audience expectation of Antonio Albanese, who delivers a trademark performance. His rapport with actress-cum-impersonator Virginia Raffaele is undeniably winning. But, while it may also be ‘a mountain thing’, the romance rings rather hollow, again because Agnese is so thinly limned. The other grown-ups are little more than ciphers, with the result that the suicide plunge, the mayoral rivalry, and the generational saga down on the farm can seem contrived.
Even the rivalry with the Castel Romito mob is undercooked, even though it raises the odd laugh. Yet so does the footage of the cat playing a keyboard on the screen behind Michele, as he drowns his sorrows in the village bar before having a close encounter of the antlered kind on his way home.
Such moments are evocatively photographed by Saverio Guarna, whose snowscapes are also impressive. We don’t quite get a sense of the proximity of the various places and the respective difficulties of access in winter. But the wildlife shots as Michele drives away from Rupe are rather charming, even though they wouldn’t be out of place in an anthropomorphised Disney animation. Piernicola Di Muro’s score occasionally errs on the sentimental side, but it reinforces the feed good aura that made this such a hit in Italy.
Of course, with wife and regular leading lady Paola Cortellesi having made such a notable start to directing career with There’s Still Tomorrow (2023), Milani now has a bit of competition on his hands. But he can always be relied upon for genial entertainment with deceptive depth.