Matteo Garrone's First Love is a dark, twisted love story that only the filmmaker could provide, a film where obsession, love, and desire create a volatile cocktail of destruction. The film is centered around Vittorio, a jewelry designer, who begins a relationship with Sonia, an attractive woman, whose full-figure isn't ideal in the eyes of Vittorio. Vittorio is an obsessive artist type who seeks perfection in everything he does, something that takes a toll on his relationships with others, both personally and professionally. Socially blunt, Vittorio even tells Sonia when they first meet that he imagined her thinner, something that leaves Sonia initially miffed, but as the two spend more time together Sonia becomes infatuated with Vittorio's one of a kind personality. As their relationship escalates, Sonia becomes increasingly dependent on Vittorio's perception of her, even accepting his strict regimen of diet and exercise in an effort to please him. Matteo Garrone's First Love is essentially a horror film masquerading as a love story, exploring a host of interesting ideas centered around personal freedom, dependency, and love. Obsessive in his work as a goldsmith, Vittorio is a man who takes the dominate role in the relationship he shares with Sonia, forcing her into a passive participant in their relationship, a woman who loses her own sense of identity and individuality in the process. To Vittorio the weight of Sonia is just another variable to control and perfect, with Garrone using juxtaposition to great use, drawing parallels between the precision Vittorio needs at work and how he brings that same mindset to his relationship. While the film clearly does have something to say about gender roles, saying it's a film about that alone feels too simplistic, as the film's intentions are much more grand than that, being more interested in roles that can develop in any relationship, regardless of gender, using this extreme tale of obsession to explore the relationship that exists between dependency and independence in all relationships. From an visual perspective the film has a very unique feel, with Garrone giving the film a yellow-tinged type aesthetic which provides visual symbolism as it relates to his main protagonists obsession with creating the perfect gold jewelry. Garrone's sweeping tracking shots are very much a part of First Love as well, but I was particularly startled by his use of focus in one particularly scene where he intentionally blurs the frame of both Sonia and Vittorio, a symbolic representation of their loss of identity and growing dependency on one and other. Matteo Garrone's First Love is fascinating exploration of love and obsession that raises lots of interesting questions as it relates to dependency and individuality.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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