Leonoro Addio (2022)

Director Paolo Taviani’s first solo film as director since the death of his brother and film making partner Vittorio, Leonora Addio returns Taviani to one of the brothers’ most fertile sources; the Nobel prize winning author Luigi Pirandello. The film tells the true story of the transportation of Pirandello’s ashes after the Second World War (he died in 1936) using both archive documentary footage and fictional footage, including scenes from Taviani’s own back catalogue. This journey takes up the first two thirds of the film, which, although slow moving, is both well made and interesting. It gives those who are new to Taviani’s work (myself included) an idea of how eccentric his film making is, offering a journey to unearth past works a thrilling prospect. It’s a real shame then, that the final third of the film takes you out of the experience almost entirely. Entitled ‘The Nail’, the segment is an adaptation of Pirandello’s final short story, surrounding the arrest of a young boy who has stabbed a young girl to death. This approach to Leonora Addio may have worked if the first hour was indeed the films’ final cut, and ‘The Nail’ was a short adaption that was perhaps an extra on a later Blu-ray release, but to tack it onto the end of the film almost feels like Taviani needed to expand the running time somewhat. He himself expressed his love of the film in a pre-recorded introduction before the films’ commencement, and there’s certainly an argument that my lack of previous experience with Taviani may have affected my enjoyment of the final third, but it distracted me from the fascinating first hour or so, which was a real shame. 6.8/10