Carried by the voice of adult Pietro (Luca Marinelli), The Eight Mountains recounts the long friendship between two solitary men from different backgrounds. In 1984, Pietro (Lupo Barbiero) and Bruno (Cristiano Sassella) are on the threshold of adolescence when they meet. A native of Turin, the first comes to spend his holidays in the mountains with his parents, Giovanni (Filippo Timi) and Francesca (Elena Lietti). Born in the small alpine village of Val d’Aosta, the second works on the dairy farm of his uncle Luigi (Gualtiero Burzi).
Director of The shit of things and D’A beautiful boythe Belgian Felix Van Groeningen called on his companion, the actress Charlotte Vandermeersch, with whom he learned the language of Dante, in order to bring the novel by Paolo Cognetti (2017 Foreign Medici Prize). Featuring two characters who are not very loquacious, the filmmakers had no choice but to bet on the majesty of the ambient landscapes. Assisted by cinematographer Ruben Impens, a faithful ally of Van Groeningen, and by Julia Ducournau (Severe And Titanium), they compose charming bucolic pictures bursting with sunshine and multiply aerial shots of dizzying beauty.
Following closely the two kids in the tall grass, they marvelously capture the first tremors of this unconditional friendship, which will be threatened by the torments of adolescence. Thus, Pietro (Andrea Palma) will lose sight of Bruno at the same time as he will break with his father, an engineer who loves walks in the eternal snows of the mountains, in order to follow his vocation as a travel writer, which will lead him to the summits. of the Himalayas.
More aesthetic than introspective
A time of mourning and reunion between Pietro and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi), adulthood will be illustrated by increasingly suffocating behind closed doors. The luminous, almost blinding flashes of summer will give way to the leaden light of autumn. As the two men rebuild the old mountainside house left by Giovanni, Pietro notes with bitterness that Bruno has become a second son for his father during his absence when he discovers his diary and his topographic maps. Like their friendship, this rustic house will become too narrow for Pietro and Bruno, more and more immured in their silence, too aware of their differences.
However attentive they are to this friendship which withers with each return of the cold season, Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch do not however manage to transmit the slightest emotion. Only Filippo Timi manages to convey the inner drama of Pietro’s silent father. While the young actors bring a note of freshness to the first act, Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi remain monolithic until the end. Too much to respect the literary origins of the story of some 300 pages, the directors have drawn a film more aesthetic than introspective stretching unnecessarily over nearly two and a half hours. Which would probably explain the surprise of moviegoers when The Eight Mountains won the Jury Prize at Cannes last year.