Last updated on September 4, 2023
A film by Saverio Costanzo
With: Lily James, Willem Dafoe, Rachel Sennott, Joe Keery, Alba Rohrwacher, Paul Boche, Anna Manuelli, Alexia Murray, Benjamin Stender, Andrea Ottavi
A young Roman woman during the 1950s is on the verge of becoming engaged to a man. She goes to Cinecittà to do an audition as an extra and is thrust into this almost infinite night during which she discovers herself.
Our Review: ***
Finalmente l’alba seems to be receiving rather negative reviews from our colleagues. And yet, although we recognize that the film could probably have benefited from a tighter focus, and perhaps less emphasis on its intentions, we liked the somewhat megalomaniacal undertaking to give thanks to cinema, in a gesture very similar to that of Chazelle (much criticized for the same reasons, incidentally) but also similar to the more recent work of Victor Erice, to question what the medium of cinema is, what it enables us to experience, and how it enables us to do so. The film, beyond its obvious transposition of “Alice in Wonderland” through the cinema screen (as Carax reminded us in his introduction to Holy Motors, or as Truffaut sought to do with La nuit américaine – a very different kind of success, or even Cinema Paradisio), is a vibrant tribute to cinema, to the dream machine it can be, to the fascination it exerts, to the stars it can put in our eyes. These stars are sometimes shooting stars, sometimes smoke and mirrors: behind the backdrop of a perfect world, a terrifying world can hide tragedies, tragedies, monstrous behavior, and upward trajectories are sometimes followed by violent setbacks. Above all, Finalmente l’Alba, beyond this inventory, possesses that very fine intention found in Fermer les yeux, showing us the power of the close-up, and reminding us that if cinema is the medium of anything, it is above all of emotions. Tears of joy, laughter, sadness, fear – all the elementary grammar of cinema – pass through the eyes of the young heroine, who, in the course of a night, a dream (or a nightmare), travels through Rome and Cinecitta, meeting rival femmes fatales who take her away from her Italian condition, taking part in an over-the-top peplum. Finally dawn arrives, finally the cinema leaves the square empty, the screen falls, and our young Alice keeps the memory, the fantasy, of a night at the movies.
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