Respiro (2002)

This film is a combination of I'm Not Afraid, Chocolat, and The Closer You Get, set in a semisqualid Italian coastal fishing town. Valeria Golino is a free spirit who cannot break loose of her restrictive small-town surroundings. Her husband won't let her take a three-hour sailboat ride with two Frenchmen, whom he then attacks; her sons won't let their sister sit with her new beau and gaze at the sea; and so on. As happy as she is with her family, her husband and indeed the whole town squelches her adventurous spirit, telling her what she must or must not do, so that she finally sets free the only creatures she can; subsequently, the town decides to banish her to an institution in Milan. Her son helps her find a limited freedom that in time brings a resolution to these dramatic tensions.

Respiro (I Breathe) is rough-cloth tapestry about the simple day-to-day ministrations of life in a small Italian coastal town where prepubescent boys run barechested, alternately ranging the countryside or bullying each other; the men cast nets for a steadily diminishing stock of fish; and the women alternately embody the town's manual-labor fish-canning industry or serve rustic food to their families. No Hollywood formulas, special effects, or explosions; just real, simple human lives that tell a story as humdrum yet fascinating and memorable as the Italian language is beautiful. Three stars.