Besides Lucia Bellaspiga’s excellent interview last Saturday with the talented Andrea Pennacchi, there isn’t much left to say about The Rose of Istria, the TV film directed by Tiziana Aristarco, which aired last night on Rai 1. You can if anything, make some considerations on the implementation aspect, that is, on the construction of the story and the ways of representing it. For the rest, we can only confirm the importance of such work in making the general public aware of a tragedy that has been kept silent if not denied for too long, that of the Foibe and the mass exodus of Istrians, Fiumeans and Dalmatians, at the end of the Second World War, to escape the purge of Marshal Tito’s Yugoslav communist regime. The film, and here we enter into the merits of the making, does so through the history of the Braico family, focusing on the vicissitudes that involve its members, without skimping on plot twists, focusing above all on the figure of Maddalena (Gracjela Kicaj) and her father Antonio ( Andrea Pennacchi). The narrative device, the most used in television dramas, is that of the flashback, the return to the past. This allows us to keep the attention high on the historical theme at the beginning and at the end, the aforementioned heartbreaking and inhuman drama of the Italian exiles from the territories of Istria and Dalmatia. At the same time it allows the large narrative space within the flashback to be filled with the most fictionalized part: Maddalena’s love affairs (perhaps even a little too troubled) and the internal dynamics of the family, the profound meaning of which never fades, even in moments of difficulty or friction. For this reason, net of some somewhat forced solutions (for example the non-death of Maddalena’s older brother), The Rose of Istria, as well as a good historical film, is also a good film about the family which in any case it comes together again. © all rights reserved
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