Nuovo Olimpo review: Italian romantic drama explores what remains of a life without love

Love here is a beast that pounces on you from the back, grabs your neck, and digs its claws deep into the heart. After which it suddenly vanishes. The aftereffects of that abrupt encounter, its wonder and sweet pain and the continual efforts to nurse those wounds are what constitute most of the plot of Nuovo Olimpo, a recent dispatch from Özpetek that first premiered at the Rome Film Festival on October 22 and was released on Netflix on November 1.

Building chemistry

The opening shot of the film takes us to a sepia-tinted film set in 1970s Rome where an enthusiastic bunch of onlookers wanting to trespass are barred by Enea (Damiano Gavino). In this bunch is also the dashing but reticent medical student Pietro (Andrea Di Luigi). Their eyes meet, and in a shot focussed on these two men swept over by the suddenness of the encounter — and the charm of their young bodies — we know it is love at first sight.

The two meet again in the pitch darkness of Nouvo Olimpo, a theatre that doubles as a gay cruising spot. The female character in the background talks of flying like a flamingo. There is desperation in her voice. The eyes of these men meet again. Enea goes to the lobby. His body quivers and his heart pounds with a strange expectation. Pietro follows him. They share a smoke after which Enea pulls him to the washroom.

Both enter the stall. Enea holds him close. His eyes brim with passion. He is about to kiss him but Pietro pulls out. Enea asks him, keeping one hand on his pounding heart, another on his erect crotch, “Are you not into me?” To which, an embarrassed Pietro, responds, “I am super into you. But I can’t do it. Here.” (emphasis mine.)

Had this been just another man, and this attraction fleeting, the sexually promiscuous Enea wouldn’t have bothered. But he returns the next day to the theatre, with a key to his friend’s grandmother’s desolate mansion — and a map to reach there so that ‘time and space won’t get between us.’

There is a morbid stillness in the dust-speckled mansion when they find a balcony overlooking the rich blue, textured skies of the city. This grandeur and expansive beauty of nature set the stage for their love to blossom. With a slight hesitation, Pietro kisses Enea after which they crash into the bed. This is also where Nuovo Olimpo shines — while the initial bits of sex are clumsy for the first-timer Pietro, the way this couple slowly adjusts and finds a tempo together is heart-warming. An impromptu dance sequence further highlights their slowly developing chemistry. Pietro is again reluctant but Enea asks him to copy him — to hold him tight on the waist, and allow his feet tap to the beats of the song, and Pietro, after an initial bit of difficulty, gets quickly attuned.

The separation

One of the most sensuous scenes of the film follows the fully-naked, slick-bodied Pietro dips his fingers into brilliantly golden jam and feeds Enea. This scene embodies the sense of comfort, of Pietro’s finally coming to a full circle in his sexual awakening. It is this scene that eventually strings the narrative ahead when the protagonists get unexpectedly separated, following a violent breakout in the city.

One is reminded of the portrayal of sexual desperation in Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name (2018), where a naive Elio scoops up the pit of the peach and masturbates in it. It is not incidental to be reminded of the fierce disagreement between the writer James Ivory and director Luca Guadagnino over watering down explicit sex scenes in the film to suit straight audiences. Ivory believed that temporal nudity could have heightened the visual experience. That way it would have been a more accurate portrayal of the queer desire.

Perhaps this discomfort of straight audiences that Guadagnino feared becomes a plot point here. The scene with jam plays out in the theatre where a moustachioed Pietro is seated in one of the rows with his wife Giulia. The past knocks at his door. He is rattled. A strange dissonance envelopes him. When a perceptive Giulia questions him, he is quick to dodge her curiosity. He begins making love to her — not only to thwart the building suspicion but also to forget that passionate night, a lost love, and a life wasted.

Time and space have seeped in their love. But does that tamper with its intensity in any way? The rest of the film tries to build on this question. However, it remains tepid in its approach.

All the lives they never lived

Enea moves on. He builds his life with a buff-bodied Antonio, who is a sweet, caring house-husband but never steps into a movie theatre. While time with Pietro remains a bittersweet memory (he buys the grandmother’s mansion with much difficulty), he has made it a part of him. It is Pietro who is actually unnerved. His self-censoring, disturbing quietude and the push and pull of his longing are heartachingly beautiful.

As the lives of both these lovers reach stasis, the screenplay begins to mimic it. Nothing much binds the audience to the screen — the longing is palpably visible, but how long will its anxiety capture our attention when it is reduced to physical chase and, that too, manifesting only through scenes we’ve gotten tired of watching and re-watching?

At places, one also feels that the director’s focus is single — the other relationships such as Pietro’s and Giulia’s marriage just remain props to propel the story ahead. While some characters such as Enea’s friend Alice or the theatre manager Titti (who tries to impersonate Italian singer Mina) have breadth, Giulia, who should have been the central protagonist, remains more-or-less flat. She doesn’t even play the role of a suspicious wife well, let alone have any interesting build-up.

“What becomes of a glorious life full of art and awards,” Alice remarks, “except for a news headline?” while sitting in a coach and reading about Federico Fellini’s passing away. For a moment, at the very end, a shot shows the two men in the thick of their youth, bereft of their jarring makeup, sipping wine, talking and laughing hard. It is the life that they could have lived. It is the life that they should have lived. Except that time and space came in the way. What actually remains of a life without passion and love?