The Keys To The House

Though the pitch for Gianni Amelio’s award winning film – distant father bonds with long-lost disabled son – may recall the well-meant condescension of Rain Man and Inside I’m Dancing, The Keys To The House somehow strikes an implausible balance between tear-jerking drama and clear-eyed depictions of impairment.

This elegantly minimal oedipal tale stars Kim Rossi Stuart as Gianni, a father coming to terms with the physical disabilities of the son he abandoned at birth. As they meet for the first time, his offspring, Paolo (played by the remarkable Andrea Rossi, who himself suffers from muscular dystrophy), has already turned fifteen and is en route to a Berlin clinic for the specialised treatment he’s needed his entire life.

Between them, as their characters become accustomed to one another, Rossi and Stuart are required to run through every emotion from anger to zeal. The absent father repeatedly swells with simultaneous embarrassment, love, sorrow and remorse, never more so than when watching his son’s twisted frame being put through its paces by a no-nonsense German physiotherapist whose barking manner puts one in mind of Ilsa and the classic heroines of soft Nazi porn. Primarily though, The Keys To The House is a poignant study of frustrations. Just as Paolo struggles with awkward adolescence, a learning deficit and limited physicality, so too does his newfound dad.

The script, by The Best Of Youth co-writers, Sandro Petraglia and Stephano Rulli, closely attends to the difficulties faced by caregivers with startling honesty, particularly when Gianni is befriended by Nicole (Charlotte Rampling - is any European male ever safe?), a woman who has sat by her severely handicapped daughter’s bedside for some twenty years. “This is mothers’ dirty work,” she tells Gianni. “The fathers can’t take it.”

Mr. Amelio’s moving, unaffected approach compares favourably with that of fellow-countryman, Nanni Moretti and barring an inexplicable subplot that plays like a broadcast on behalf of the Scandinavian Tourist Authorities, The Keys To The House never feels less than authentic.

Running Time 111mins. Cert IFI members. Opens April 22nd.