Toward the Light

IL FUTURO (THE FUTURE) (B+) - What could have been a tiresome telling of the cliched relationship between an old man and a young woman is made fresh by a wonderful performance from Italian TV actress Manuella Martelli.

Bianca (Martelli) and her brother, Tomas (Luigi Ciardo), are high schoolers suddenly on their own after their parents are killed in a car crash. Bianca loses interest in her studies and takes up smoking, while Tomas skips school to work at a gym, where he falls in with a couple of goons from the team of a local bodybuilder. The boys get the idea that a former American Mr. Universe, known as Maciste (a doughy Rutger Hauer), is hiding a treasure in a safe somewhere in his mansion in town and that Bianca should seduce him and divine the location of the haul.

The first half hour is a bit slow, as writer/director Alicia Scherson (adapting a novel by heralded Chilean writer Roberto Bolano) shows the teens getting used to being independent and welcoming the monosyllabic meatheads Libio and Balones into their cluttered, crowded apartment. The slackers watch a lot of TV (Tomas pirates porn; Bianca is partial to a quiz show hosted by a child), and we often see them sleeping or dozing (as if in suspended animation -- or in the womb?). The three young men become inseparable, conducting shady dealings, presumably involving the purchase of steroids, as they create a mildly homoerotic world (they razz their man Gigi (!) for using a "gay" song while posing at a competition, and the two thugs sleep together in the orphans' parents' room, though each also gets a bit of attention from Bianca).

Soon, Bianca takes over the film, and Martelli, whose sharp features resemble Noomi Rapace's hard-ass Lisbeth Salander in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," is a revelation. Bianca is stone-faced and glum, claiming that she has become hyper-sensitive to light since her parents died. This subtle teen-vampire theme carries over to the dark, dingy mansion of Maciste, who never ventures outside and rarely lets natural light in.

Maciste (pronounced Mah-CHEE-steh) still maintains remnants of Hauer's rugged good looks. He is now blind, but he recognizes a lovely young woman when she's in his presence. In a nod to his own formative years in the body-building game, Maciste likes to coat Bianca in oil from head to toe. Martelli has a wiry, athletic frame and she is frequently naked and glistening or luxuriously wrapped in a silk robe as she meanders through the many rooms that are classically furnished like in old movies. This is a searching, a yearning, and Bianca is not so much trying to find Maciste's treasure (if it exists at all) but rather her self, her identity, the path forward. She's playing like a child in a cluttered basement. She makes token efforts of peeking behind paintings or under rugs, but she is either truly indifferent to the existence of this stash or wary of betraying the man she is falling in love with.

The nudity feels not at all exploitative (easy for us middle-aged men to say) but primal and natural. Bianca is being baptized anew; Martelli is a chiseled work of art. A slow-motion tracking shot of Bianca being carried by her burly protector is breathtaking; we see a close-up of her face, like an infant's, staring up in appreciation and wonder, and then Scherson cuts to a shot of the ceiling seen from Bianca's perspective. The young woman is being delivered to the world, reborn. What could have been creepy is instead touching and sweet. When Maciste is finally drawn toward the light, the visual is heart-breaking.

This may deserve a higher grade (the sloppiness of the first half held me back), and some viewers might consider this a piece of trash. Attempts at profundity early on and in the final shot confuse more than they enlighten. In the end, "Il Futuro" is lovely and haunting, as elegant as a marble Italian statue.

BONUS TRACK

The closing credits revive the Patti Smith song "Wing," and it caps things perfectly.