Five Seconds” by Paolo Virzì, a film with two souls between social comedy and family drama

Five seconds and at least two/three films in one. The sixteenth feature film dand Paolo Virzi – first ever in the section Grand Public of the Rome Film Festival 2025 – plastically reflects its transformative needs in terms of tonality and genre dramaturgy. Practically since Virzì and his writing team (here they are Carlo Virzì and his friend Francesco Bruni) the adventure of a sort of sophistication began (from Human capitalso to speak) on the register of early popular comedy (Ovosodo, August holidays, Caterina goes to town) also followed a series of more or less unrealistic attempts to make their films something more intellectually and stylistically complex. Just say Crazy joy one passes by every now and then and mostly crooked prototypes peep out Drought.

Per Five seconds the analysis also becomes more complex. Because Virzì makes at least two films and tries to combine them, to connect the two dots, as if they were the two sides of the same coin. Then of course maybe they are, but you have to put a lot of glue on them. On the one hand we therefore find all the festoons left over from the social satire of the beginning with the narrative drone that opens the film where the almost old wealthy grumpy Adriano (Valerio Mastandrea) isolated in a farmhouse (sorry: renovated stables) on the hill (there is even a strange snow to mark the time which does not last in the short term and becomes pouring rain) is annoyed by the youngsters extinction rebellion all graduates and brilliant people who occupy, guitars, earrings, various fluidities, the ruined noble villa, revitalizing the abandoned vineyard without chemistry (it’s called natural wine, in the sector). Well Adriano is at first radically annoyed by these nuisances but as soon as he sees that the leader of the occupiers (Galatea Bellugi) performs Herculean labors among the rows but is pregnant, melts like the snow of the beginning and prostrates himself to help her. At that point it is clear that Adriano is hiding a secret that has led to his sudden isolation. And here comes the second film featured in Five Seconds. Adriano is a successful lawyer, but attentive to the causes of the poor, who has been accused of manslaughter for the accidental death of his daughter with an irreversible neurological pathology.

The other dot of Five Seconds, the one to combine with allure Kisses and hugs (without ostriches) from the Collina Campagna block, is an intense, powerful and moving dramatic text with Adriano intent on mending his intimate relationship with his other son, present at the tragedy of his sister’s death, and appearing in court for a respectable court room drama. A medium French cinema model nuance (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi guarantees grit and refinement in this regard) where in some moments Mastandrea looks like a wrinkled Daniel Auteuil what a lawyer does (The measure of doubtso to speak). Five Seconds thus has two souls: the slightly tarnished and darkened one, where the scathing comic turns into a little scratch, of the occupants; and the most inspired, solid, engaging, on the trail of a heartfelt illustration of paternal responsibility and on the subtle reasoning around a reflection on the unconscious persistence of the end of life. The overall result, after all, is not bad. The final seam around the birth, after the drama in court and a goodbye in the chilling rain, is nuanced with (canine) grace, little background noise, absence of cuteness. Mastandrea works better, very well indeed, in the rough, often silent determination of the injured lawyer rather than in that of the awkward substitute father. In theaters from October 30th. The judge is Giancarlo De Cataldo.