FIVE SECONDS
The son of a Sicilian policeman, Paolo Virzì developed a love of literature during his Livorno childhood before studying under the great screenwriter, Furio Scarpelli at Rome's fabled film school, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. A number of shorts and features from this period have seemingly disappeared. But Virzì returned to directing after serving his writing apprenticeship in the 1990s and won both the David di Donatello and the Nastro d'Argento awards for Best New Director with La bella vita/Living It Up (1994).
Following the Best Film Donatello for Ferie d'agosto/August Vacation (1995), Virzì won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival for Ovosodo/Hardboiled Egg (1997). He further bolstered his critical reputation with Baci e abbracci/Kisses and Hugs (1999), My Name Is Tanino (2002), and Caterina va in città/Caterina in the Big City (2003). The historical comedy, N (Io e Napoleone)/Napoleon and Me (2006) was followed by Tutta la vita davanti/Your Whole Life Ahead of You (2008), a dark ensemble satire that won the Nastro, the Globo d'oro, and the Ciak d'oro for Best Film.
Having returned to Livorno to profile singer Bobo Rondelli in L'uomo che aveva picchiato la testa/The Man Who Hit His Head, Virzì racked up 18 Donatello nominations (winning three) for La prima cosa bella/The First Beautiful Thing (both 2009), which also won four Nastri. Further acclaimed for Tutti i santi giorni/Every Blessed Day (2012), Virzì bagged another mammoth Donatello haul when Il capitale umano/Human Capital (2013) converted seven of its 19 nominations, including Best Film. He reunited with
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi for La Pazza Gioia/Like Crazy (2016), which amassed 17 Donatello nominations, with the Best Film and Best Director wins being matched at the Nastri.
Virzì next paired Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren for The Leisure Seeker (2017), which was filmed in English in the United States. Back home for Notti magiche/Magical Nights (2018), he embraced the commedia all'italiana style before fashioning the dystopian drama, Siccità/Dry (2022). He even produced a sequel, with Un altro ferragosto/Another Summer Holiday (2024), before collaborating for a fifth time with actor Valerio Mastandrea on Cinque secondi/Five Seconds (2025). Showing in London this weekend under the auspices of CinemaItaliaUK, this is Virzì's latest attempt to assess Italian society through the eyes of a complex and, sometimes, contradictory character.
Seeking sanctuary from his troubles, Adriano Sereni (Valerio Mastandrea) has gone into hiding in the stables at Villa Guelfi. He braves the Tuscan snow to collect groceries from the nearby town, but he refuses to allow anyone to fix an electrical fault in person, as he wants to be alone. Much to his frustration, however, a mini-bus full of twentysomethings arrives and camps out at the rundown villa. They start tending the vineyard that has been left to moulder and Adriano learns that the blonde leader of the group is the Countess Matilde Guelfi Camaiani (Galatea Bellugi), whose grandfather had owned the villa in better times.
Adriano receives a visit from his lawyer, Giuliana (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), who tries to bring him up to date with the court case he is striving to ignore. She also tidies him up before he has a conference call with his partner and staff to announce that he is quitting his law firm forthwith. His surly mood is not improved when Matilde drops by with a box of produce and he realises that he is stuck with her, despite having signed a rental agreement that would guarantee him seclusion.
One morning, Adriano takes the train to Rome and walks into the courtroom, where he is being tried for the involuntary manslaughter of his 17 year-old daughter, Elena (Caterina Rugghia). The judge (Giancarlo De Cataldo) notes that he is being represented by the inexperienced Maria Pesaresi (Anna Ferraioli Ravel), while the prosecutor is Eugenio Cimarosa (Lorenzo Balducci). He also clarifies that the case has been brought by Elena's mother and Adriano's ex-wife, Letizia Verusio (Ilaria Spada).
She makes a tearful statement to the court, in which she claims that Adriano had been too busy with work to devote time to Elena and her younger brother, Matteo (Luca Charles Brucini). Moreover, he was dismissive of medical advice concerning the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis that confined Elena to a wheelchair. Offering nothing in mitigation, Adriano catches up with Letizia after the adjournment and she snaps that they had sucked at marriage. As Matteo refuses to see him, Adriano goes to his school, but the boy gives him the slip at the gates.
However, Adriano gets to read his son's statement about the day he had lied to Letizia about taking the kids to a museum and they had gone swimming in a lake instead. Elena had enjoyed being in the water, but Matteo had returned from buying lunch to find a crowd around her and he immediately feared the worst.
Discovering that Matilde is pregnant, Adriano tries to browbeat her for being so reckless while working on the vines and climbing an olive tree. She resents his intrusion, however, and smashes a window in the stables before informing him that, having coped with her father's suicide as a child, as she doesn't need any man to set boundaries. However, she is grateful when he volunteers himself as her lawyer after she and her fellow squatters are rounded up by Vice Commissario Bosco (Francesco Maria Dominedò) so that an bank employee can show the villa to prospective bidders at a forthcoming auction. Coaxing Matilde into claiming discomfort after Bosco tries to detain her for biting one of his officers on the hand, Adriano succeeds in getting them released, but he can't guarantee a happy ending regarding the villa.
Feeling protective towards Matilde (after what had happened to Elena), he frets when she insists on swimming in the sea with her friends. She also rejects getting doctors involved with her pregnancy and teases Adriano about fussing over her while they tread grapes together. As she had helped her grandfather, Matilde has a feel for wine-making, but others in the group have useful academic qualifications and Adriano likes the way they work together, just as they admire him (having looked him up online) for the underdog cases he has won against the rich and powerful.
Determined to ensure that Adriano turns up in court, Giuliana comes to the villa for Matilde's wine-tasting. She recognises that her friend is being overly protective towards the younger woman, but flirts with him whene they dance after Matilde had stormed off to bed because she had grown tired of him mollycoddling her. Giuliana reveals that she has had a boob job and wears a wig (perhaps because she lost her hair during chemo) before flirting with one of the young musicians, as Adriano goes to check on the sleeping Matilde.
Next morning, Giuliana is waiting to take Adriano to Rome. The prosecutor calls for him to be sentenced to six years for having shown no remorse over a death he had caused by reckless parenting. Responding, his counsel claims that he was taking a phone call from Letizia when he took his eye off Elena and Pesaresi suggests that this was typical of her refusal to let Adriano give his daughter moments to cherish in what he knew was a difficult life.
At this point, Adriano asks to address the court. He recalls that Elena had been fascinated by the rowing at the Paralympics and she had spotted a canoe on the shore during their day out. She had been paddling around when Letizia had phoned and Adriano bitterly regrets taking the call. But he also apologises to her in court for letting the kids be sarcastic towards her when she had always meant well by cossetting them. Adriano explains how he was paralysed for five seconds on turning to see the canoe had overturned and others had rushed into the shallow water to help Elena. But she couldn't be revived and Adriano dismays Giuliana by telling the judge that he pleads guilty to the charge.
Having spoken briefly to Matteo in the lobby, Adriano hears the judge sentence him to a suspended year in prison before imposing fines. But Adriano doesn't wait for the full judgement. Giuliana follows him into the rain and curses him to letting Letizia ruin his life when she would have adored him and given him wacky children. He kisses her fondly before hailing a taxi. On the train back to Tuscany, he thinks about Elena telling him how tired she was of her illness, as he held her in the water. She had come to resent the pity that people showed her and feared that things were only going to get worse. He had encouraged her to have faith and it was then that she saw the canoes on the bank. Perhaps that was why he hesitated, because he felt that Elena was entitled to do things her own way?
Returning to the villa during a storm, Adriano is disturbed by Matilde's dog coming to the stables. Rushing to the house, he finds her alone because the others had gone to a social dinner. Her waters have broken and Adriano helps give birth to Anita before rushing them both to the nearest hospital. He gets a long, hard glare from Matilde because he had called Anita's father, Emilio (Andrea Palma), but he feels he's done the right thing and, as he gets back into his car, he is rewarded with a text from Matteo.
Scripted by Virzì with his brother, Carlo, and Francesco Bruni, this may be a little convoluted in its plotting, while the metaphor of a dormant vineyard being tended back to life is hardly subtle. But, like Avelina Prat's similarly themed, The Portuguese House, it's an unapologetically grown-up film that is played with great intensity and dignity by Valerio Mastandrea, as he clears Adriano's way through complicated emotions and crippling guilt to a place of self-forgiveness and new beginnings. Chances are, of course, that the villa will be sold off from beneath the young countess and she will need someone else to begin family life. Presumably, also, Adriano will move back to Rome to be nearer Matteo, even if he may well not resume his career. But such imponderables only add to the pleasure of a watching a picture that respects the audience's intelligence.
While it might have been nice to get to know some of the young people around Matilde in greater depth, Virzì avoids getting bogged down in sub-sub-plots when there is already plenty going on, especially once the flashbacks start to kick in. Despite Galatea Bellugi's gift for a sulky pout, the free-spirited Matilde remains rather elusive, as does Giuliana, who is played with typically irresistible empathy and coquettish insecurity by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. Indeed, the sheer fact that she is so besotted with Adriano helps persuade us that he is a decent man, although his gallant apology to Letizia in court doesn't quite atone for her being presented as a stereotypical nagging wife with a domineering mother.
Cinematographer Luca Bigazzi's views of the vineyard across the seasons are evocatively bucolic, while production designer Sonia Peng ably contrasts the shabby grandeur of the neglected villa with the regimented order of the courtroom. Between contrasting speeches by Letizia and Adriano, little actually happens during the trial, besides some cheap (borderline chauvinistic) comedy at the expense of Anna Ferraioli Ravel's dishevelled, thick-lensed lawyer. But the brightly lit flashbacks hold the key to the case and its moral conundrum, even if we can't quite be sure what went through Adriano's mind during those fateful five seconds.