trailer: Beyond Love

Varie

An Italian lesbian couple wants a child. A gay couple tries to help them. Four friends, hundreds of problems. One solution. Anna and Marina are in love and they have been living together for over 10 years. Stefano and Tony, a gay couple, are their best friends. Since her childhood Marina has been really close to Stefano. They are true friends: one soul in two bodies. Anna tells Marina that she would like to have a baby to strengthen their relationship. Marina reacts enthusiastically, but there is a problem: they both want to be mothers.

RECENSIONE:

Anna and Marina are an Italian lesbian couple who have been together for 10 years and are at the point in their relationship where they want to add an extra dimension into it by having a baby. Both women have avoided bringing up the conversation before as they were unsure of how the other would feel, but it turns out that they have both been wanting the same thing for some time. There is just one snag, both women want to be the birth mother, and with only one of them working, they simply cannot afford to raise two kids. And if that is not bad enough, they have nothing like the $15000 it will cost to get artificial inseminated.
The whole matter becomes such a sore subject between the two women that their constant arguing is threatening their relationship. A frustrated Marina turns to her best friend Stefano, who she has known since childhood, for help. He is gay and in a very happy relationship with his boyfriend Tom, so he suggests that the way out of her predicament is to sleep with a man …. advice which causes her to start arguing with him.
After she angrily storms out Stefano feels really bad that he has let Marina down, and as he doesn’t have the money to lend her, jokingly asks Tom how he could raise $15000 quickly. The answer he receives is not really the one that he wants, but unbeknown to Tom he starts to follow this very risky idea anyway, which when it does become public knowledge, leads to Tom walking out on their relationship.
Most of this rather dramatic tale with all its twist an turns unwinds in flashbacks as the two men and Anna sit in a hospital waiting for news if Marina will pull through from the overdose she took in desperation.
This rather remarkable debut feature from writer/director Silvio Alfonso Nacucchi shows what can possibly go wrong when close friends try and help each other as a means of showing their love. Its a touching tender story, beautifully told, if not a tad too melodramatic at times, and with four very fine and compelling performances from the lead actors which so beautifully portrayed the dynamics of the relationships between them all. It’s a powerful piece that runs the whole gamut of emotions and has a neat and unpredictable ending.
Nacucchi’s take on an ever increasingly dilemma in same-sex relationships is especially relevant as even in contemporary Italian society, the rights of LGBT people are extremely limited, and adoption is certainly not an option open to them.
Premiered in Berlin earlier this year and no doubt about to hit the Film Festival circuit … It’s one that I highly recommend. (queertiques.com)