Amen is a film to see. Between religious extremism and instincts to rediscover

Watching Amenthe first work written and directed by Andrea Baroni produced by Fandango and TNM Produzioni, immediately comes to mind The deception by Sofia Coppola, that film in which a group of dutiful and respectable women live in a house in the countryside until a deserter from the civil war enters their lives, altering the balance and making everyone discover that, in addition to the soul, there is also the body. In Amen more or less the same thing happens, except that here we are in the presence of a family unit made up of a father (Luigi Di Fiore), a grandmother (Paola Sambo) and three daughters, Sarah (Grace Ambrose), Esther (Francesca Carrain) and Miriam (Valentina Filippeschi), who live in a farmhouse in the countryside that seems to have stopped in time. The family in question is religious in a way that is not only orthodox but also toxic: to regulate the life of the girls by prohibiting them from the small pleasures of life such as listening to Patty Pravo on the radio, is, in fact, the reading and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures which aims to teach them how important it is to be incorruptible and to dedicate themselves to the spirit in order to get as close as possible to the Lord.

The ones who ensure that this extreme rigor is respected are, in fact, the domineering father and the dogmatic grandmother, modern shepherds of a creed that does not allow their daughters to savor the beauties of life because all primal instincts suggested by their body must be repressed to earn a place in the kingdom of heaven. Things change, however, when the man arrives at the farmhouse First (Simone Guarany), the cousin of the girls: he is a strong and silent man who, exactly as it happened in theDeceitis ready to upset the balance because at that moment the girls, in the midst of theiror adolescent whirlwindthey will come into contact with those impulses that are more than normal for girls their age but which, however, their family has forced them to repress.

Amenin this sense, It’s both a thriller and a drama filmas the figures of the father and the grandmother ruthlessly crush the wills and dreams of three girls who only want to be like the others. Together with the extraordinary photography by Niccolò Palomba that immerses us in this enchanted bubble made of crickets, greenery and light, what is most convincing is the interpretation of Grace Ambrose and Francesca Carrainabsolutely perfect in lending their faces to two very different girls aiming for the same goal: live their life to the fullest without anyone telling them they can’t earn SalvationWe won’t tell you how it will end, even if the dramatic tones reached by the plot will reach a point of no return that will touch on the horror shades that few would have expected. In this, Amenwhich also features Silvia D’Amico, is a pleasant surprise that we hope as many viewers as possible will discover: if only to admire the talent of an actress like Grace Ambrose and the directorial expertise of Baroni, which we are sure will give us more and more satisfaction in the future.

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