Diciannove is a 2024 debut film from Italian-American director Giovanni Tortorici. It tells the story of Leonardo, a shy 19-year-old living in Palermo, Sicily. As Leonardo prepares to leave home to study abroad, he feels uncertainty about his future and where he truly belongs. Though he plans to live with his sister in London and study business, something deeper calls to him.
Tortorici takes us inside Leonardo’s mind with experimental filmic techniques that match his protagonist’s restless thoughts. Abrupt cuts and zooms transport us to new places in Leonardo’s journey of self-discovery. Through it all, newcomer Manfredi Marini brings nuanced vulnerability to the role.
Leonardo’s path is anything but straightforward. Business school doesn’t feel right, so he impulsively moves to Siena to study literature instead. Yet connecting with others proves difficult as he marches to his own beat. As strange interests and confusing desires emerge, Leonardo remains an enigma even to himself.
Diciannove offers an intimate portrayal of feeling adrift between adolescence and adulthood. With empathy, Tortorici captures the curiosity, confusion, and solitary search for identity many experience at that threshold age. His unconventional storytelling mirrors Leonardo’s nonlinear process of becoming who he is meant to be.
A wandering path of self-discovery
The film introduces us to Leonardo living with his family in Palermo, Sicily. Though planning to join his sister in London for business school, Leonardo feels uncertain. When the time comes to leave, his mother worries for him on the trip.
In London, Leonardo stays with his sister Arianna but struggles with her party lifestyle. A drunken night out exposes his naivety, and he realizes business is not his passion. Learning of a literature program in Siena, Leonardo impulsively switches paths.
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Arriving in the beautiful Tuscan city, Leonardo immerses himself in classic works. Yet he has trouble connecting with others. Leonardo criticizes his professors’ teachings and isolates himself in his room.
As Leonardo delves deeper into obscure literature, his behavior becomes more erratic. He drops classes and lashes out and those trying to know him. While Leonardo seems to enjoy moments alone, one senses his loneliness.
Leonardo’s journey continues as he leaves Siena for other cities, ever in search of purpose. The film remains true to the uncertainty of discovering oneself at that age. By the end, Leonardo has changed locations once more.
Though his future remains mysterious, the viewer glimpses Leonardo’s potential through small, happy moments of connection. His unconventional path suggests life’s nonlinearity and how we evolve through spontaneous turns.
Quiet discovery of self
Leonardo is a complex protagonist figuring himself out. As a shy teenager on the brink of adulthood, he craves belonging yet guards his independence. Leonardo questions where he fits in life.
He feels deeply ambivalent. In Palermo, Leonardo talks of youth today changing faster than he can keep pace. Uneasy with business school in London, literature stirs his soul but confounds his intellect. He is uncertain of attraction, vacillating between curiosity and fear of unfamiliar feelings.
Throughout, newcomer Manfredi Marini brings empathy to Leonardo’s plight. With subtle glances, Marini conveys Leonardo’s interior rumination and conflict better than words ever could. His hopeful hesitance tugs at the heartstrings of anyone navigating life’s uncertainties.
Leonardo stays appealingly enigmatic, resisting cliche resolution. Tortorici sees beyond archetypes to recognize life’s complexity, especially for questioning souls. Through Leonardo, we share trials of being misunderstood despite yearning to understand ourselves.
His untamed curiosity pulls us along an unpolished journey, imperfect like our own. Marini ensures even Leonardo’s prickliest traits feel universal—the struggle to become one’s truer self. In this, Leonardo is each person discovering who they are meant to be through halting steps of quiet discovery.
An intimate glimpse inside the mind
Giovanni Tortorici brings a burst of fresh energy to coming-of-age films with his experimental directorial style. Drawing from Italian cinematic traditions, he seamlessly blends techniques like zooms, cuts, and animation to pull audiences deep into Leonardo’s chaotic inner world.
Viewers are rarely given a moment to find footing as the restless camera mirrors Leonardo’s wandering mind. Disorienting and intimate, Tortorici’s roving lens gives us fragmented glimpses, as though navigating thoughts. Through this intrepid style, we share Leonardo’s discomfort in his own skin.
From sensorial close-ups to jarring shifts in scenery, Tortorici keeps audiences as unbalanced as his protagonist. Intent on capturing the rawness of teenage confusion, he eschews traditional storytelling for a collage reflecting Leonardo’s patchwork psyche. Though some techniques feel unpolished, together they immerse us in 19-year-old turmoil.
As Leonardo zigzags between interests and cities, so too does the energetic filmmaking sweep between influences. Yet beneath abrupt shifts lies focus: giving expression to internal conflict we’ve all faced, whether questioning place in the world or notions of the self.
By prioritizing feeling over finesse, Tortorici has crafted an empathetic portrait of being lost within, a disorientation that ultimately brings us closer to Leonardo’s lived experience. His vision pulls back the lens on an intimate perspective too rarely granted cinema: the tangled mind of emerging adulthood.
A winding path to self
Identity is a core theme as Leonardo navigates life’s uncertain threshold. As a shy 19-year-old, belonging feels elusive, whether among family, friends, or within himself.
Tortorici captures modern disconnect: Leonardo craves tradition amid digital deluge yet fails to fully connect with either. Seeking solace in literature, Leonardo finds unfamiliar feelings emerging. His struggle to reconcile sexuality mirrors turbulent paths to self-discovery.
Alienation permeates as Leonardo floats between interests and cities, uncertain where he fits. Isolation takes its toll yet fuels singular passions. Mental health lurks too, as questioning nature meets reactionary tendencies.
Uncertainty plagues this period yet feels universal. Change dismantles childhood’s security yet opens doors of reinvention. Leonardo’s unmoored journey mirrors nonconformity in us all.
Diciannove gently probes life’s confusions when answers feel scarce but curiosity rife. It resonates by acknowledging uncertainty as a rite—not a flaw—of youth. With empathy, Tortorici reminds us that becoming oneself happens not througharriving but winding along. Leonardo’s path suggests comfort in imperfect steps of understanding both self and other souls navigating life’s crossroads.
Unraveling in Siena
When Leonardo first arrives in London, excitement meets confusion. Joining bustling nights out with his sister, drinking’s highs soon give way to dizzying lows. Business school leaves him cold; partying’s thrill proves fleeting.
In Siena, Leonardo hopes literature will provide solace. Yet isolation sets in as classmates find him prickly and professors’ wisdom wanting. He questions all, following no one else’s path.
Scenes of Leonardo holed in his sparse room are telling. Surrounded by stacks of treasured books yet cut off from community, loneliness permeates. His online searches drift to curiosities more troubling, a cry for connection amid disconnect.
Footage of Leonardo facing hostile students and disgruntled dons paints a bleaker picture. Floundering without direction stokes resentment of any perceived judgment. Defiance shields deeper suffering at being cast adrift without anchor.
The film’s final scene is purposefully enigmatic. Leonardo is parted once more from Siena; destination unclear. As the past offers him no answers, his future stays shrouded—a life on winding terms solely his own.
Tortorici leaves audience and protagonist alike unsettled. In refusal of easy wrappings, the director portrays life’s complexities and how, in flux, self-discovery remains for curious souls still learning who they may become.
An unfinished journey of self
Tortorici crafts Diciannove as an intimate yet elusive trip of discovery. Through Leonardo’s restless wanderings and Marini’s understated brilliance, we live interrogations of a vulnerable age.
Conventional tales offer resolution, yet life seldom wraps up neatly. Tortorici sees beyond pat endings to reflect reality’s fluidity. As Leonardo drifts between interests and cities, he models life’s winding exploration—and how its lessons come piecemeal through lived experiences.
The director’s restless, intimate style immerses us in Leonardo’s roving mind. His fluid vignettes evoke changeability as we transition from adolescence. Through Leonardo, Tortorici reminds us that becoming oneself happens through experiment, not arrival.
So Diciannove leaves Leonardo, and us, wanting more. But rightly so—for questioning has no end, and self-understanding evolves. In this unfinished journey, Tortorici conveys life’s poignant uncertainties with empathy few achieve. This is a film that, like Youth, stays with you long after the closing scenes fade.
The Review
Diciannove
Diciannove offers a tender, true-to-life portrait of uncertainty and discovery as youth gives way to adulthood. Director Giovanni Tortorici looks beyond formulas to grasp life's complexity, especially during its crossroads of change. With empathy and experimentation, he reminds us that self-understanding evolves through experience, not arrival.
PROS
- Nuanced characterization of Leonardo's internal struggles
- Immersive and innovative cinematography capturing restless mindsets
- Thoughtful themes of identity, belonging, and sexuality
- Empathy for life's uncertainties and lack of easy answers
CONS
- Abrupt tonal shifts take adjusting to the film's style.
- Narrative occasionally lacks cohesion due to experimentation.
- Minimal plot resolution may frustrate some viewers.
- Very open ending leaves many questions unanswered.
