Sicilian Ghost Story review: A genre-bending affair based on an infamous Mafia kidnapping

Joint directors Grassadonia and Piazza pay as much attention to landscape as they do to character

(Altitude)

Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza, 118 mins, starring: Julia Jedlikowska, Gaetano Fernandez, Corinne Musallari, Andrea Falzone, Federico Finocchiaro, Lorenzo Curcio

Sicilian Ghost Story is a genre-bending affair that combines elements of teen romance, gothic psycho-drama and political thriller. It is loosely based on a true story of a boy called Giuseppe Di Matteo whose father, an ex-member of the Sicilian Mafia, turned “grass” against his erstwhile associates. The Mafia responded by kidnapping Giuseppe and keeping him in captivity for nearly 800 days.

Writer-directors Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza tell Giuseppe’s story from the perspective of a teenage girl at school with Giuseppe, with whom she has taken a shine. Luna (Julia Jedlikowska) is a fiercely independent teenager, a little warrior chafing against her conformist parents. She is artistic, too, with a vivid imagination and a tendency to daydream.

Early scenes here have a feeling of Hansel and Gretel about them. After school, Luna follows Giuseppe (Gaetano Fernandez) into the woods. They encounter a ferocious dog. He rescues her. They’re kindred spirits, falling in love, but her parents don’t want her to have anything to do with him. Giuseppe is a sensitive boy with an unlikely passion for show jumping.

We never hear precisely why Giuseppe’s father turned against his former Mafia associates. When he is kidnapped, no one other than Luna seems to care. Together with a friend, she dyes her hair blue and marches round town, handing out missing person leaflets. The police are apathetic. Other kids seem to think Giuseppe has received his just dessert and have no compunction about stealing his desk in the classroom.

Throughout Sicilian Ghost Story, brutal realism and dream-like fantasy are mixed together in delicate fashion. As Luna looks for the missing boy, she conjures him up in her mind’s eye. He is being treated like a dog by his captors, who have him shackled up. They liken him to a “small but troublesome puppy”. We can’t help but notice the welts and scars on his shins and ankles, where he has been chained too tightly.

There are echoes here of Ridley Scott’s recent All The Money In The World, in which John Paul Getty III was the young kidnap victim. The difference is that nobody other than Luna is trying to get Giuseppe back. The filmmakers seem more interested in the girl’s dreams about the missing boy than in the adults’ negotiations to pay ransoms or sort out drop off points.

Sicilian Ghost Story is affecting and original – and it has a political kick too. This is a Mafia movie in which the only point of view that matters is that of the kids.

The two leads are exceptional. Julia Jedlikowska captures Luna’s vulnerability as well as her fierceness and tenacity. Gaetano Fernandez plays the kidnapped boy as courageous but very fatalistic. He understands perfectly how Sicilian society works and knows to expect the worst. In their brief scenes together, the two are able to keep the problems of the outside world at bay.

They have such a strong connection that the film gives us the sense they are communicating, even when they are apart. Joint directors Grassadonia and Piazza pay as much attention to landscape as they do to character. They combine lyrical interludes with scenes in which the horrific nature of the boy’s plight becomes all too painfully apparent.

Sicilian Ghost Story hits UK cinemas 3 August