Movie Review: The Ties

By Tony Polese · On October 21, 2021

ST.Ali Italian Film Festival
Palace Nova Cinema’s

From Now till November 14, 2021

Review by Geoff Jenke

The Italian Film Festival was founded in 2000 by Cav. Antonio Zeccola who, in one of Australia’s many migrant success stories, built Australia’s only national boutique cinema network which now encompasses twenty-four cinemas and more than one hundred screens nationally.

Twenty-two years ago, Antonio realised that Australia had other film festivals, but nothing dedicated to Italian cinema, and an idea was born. Organised entirely by Palace, a 100% Australian-owned independent family business, the festival continues to present the best new contemporary Italian cinema and most cherished classics on the big screen. For more than two decades the Italian Film Festival has celebrated Italian language, culture and la dolce vita with an ever-growing audience.

Opening night this year, we were presented with the movie LACCI or The TIES which charts the lives of a middle-class Italian family across three decades. Naples, early 1980s. The once-happy union between Aldo (Luigi Lo Cascio) and his wife Vanda (a superb Alba Rohrwacher) is ruptured one evening when Aldo admits, unprompted, that he has been unfaithful. Equally hurt and bewildered, Vanda attempts to hide her pain from the couple’s two school-age kids. 30 years later, Aldo (Silvio Orlando) and Vanda (Laura Morante) are still together, but their relationships with each other and grownup children Anna (Giovanni Mezzogiorno) and Sandro (Adriano Giannini) continue to be defined by what happened all those years ago.

While the movie’s first half is set in 1980, the second half flowed back and forth across the years. And just when you have the movie “worked out”, it shifts into surprising new territory.

The Ties is a movie that one should never take as the ending is a given. Excellent viewing.