The Son's Room

A teenage boy's sudden, accidental death leaves his family members struggling to find the means of coping with their grief in The Son's Room, a haunting film written and directed by, and also starring, the Italian film auteur Nanni Moretti. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, The Son's Room ranks with such films as In the Bedroom, Ordinary People, and Terms of Endearment in the sensitivity with which it observes the effect a child's death on the remaining members of the family. The responses are both unique and universal -- and not only is there the experience of grief, but also the journey toward healing. Yet Moretti's narrative restraint prevents The Son's Room from becoming an emotional blubberfest. His observational detachment sets the tone for this picture: It is not sorrow itself that Moretti is interested in so much as the way individuals deal with it and continue the act of living, and how, in retrospect, random events can grow in importance and assume the form of destiny. Appropriately, Moretti's character, Giovanni, is a psychiatrist, professionally trained to handle individuals in crisis and suffering from psychic pain. He leads the life of a comfortable professional, married to a beautiful wife (Morante), who is also a professional. They have two lovely and good-natured teenage children (Trinca and Sanfelice). Giovanni sees patients in his home office, and many are the scenes in which we observe Giovanni's compassionate ministrations to his troubled clients. When one calls him at home on a Sunday in need of his help, Giovanni treks out to the patient's home and abandons his afternoon plans with his family. Thus begins a “would have, could have, should have” train of thought, as Giovanni's son dies that afternoon in a diving accident that might never have occurred if the two had gone running as they had originally planned before Giovanni's patient called. In fact, a marvelous sequence that precedes the son's death shows each of the family members experiencing a precarious personal situation during their various afternoon outings, suggesting that fate is ultimately random and haphazard. In many ways, the plot resembles a living tableau of Elisabeth Kübler Ross' explication of the stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We witness the individual strategies employed by the three remaining family members, but it is not until they embark on a mutual mission that there seems to be any renewed hope for facing the future. The film's closing may be less than conclusive, yet The Son's Room must be admired, at least, for its unsentimentality. The portraits it provides are shorn of emotional catharsis and pat resolutions. Moretti uses small details to weave his story, which, no doubt, is also informed by the director's own cancer diagnosis several years ago. The Son's Room becomes part of the edifice of his career: a sacred chamber in which living and the dead can dance.