With grace and understanding, actor-turned-filmmaker Valeria Golino explores the inescapable eventuality of human mortality: that one day, each and every life will come to its conclusion. The means and method provide her plot, as ensconsed in an issue topical and controversial; yet, the film’s fictional narrative is steeped in emotion, rather than rhetoric. In Honey (Miele), it is the time leading up to that unavoidable end that matters, and the ways in which we accept our fate that proves most pertinent.
The smart, enterprising Irene (Jasmine Trinca, There Will Come a Day) is in the upswing of youth; however, under the pseudonym of Honey, death is her business. To her family and friends, she is careening and commitment-free, with overseas jaunts and multiple romantic encounters filling her days. To the terminally ill she ushers into the afterlife – using veterinary medications procured on monthly trips to Mexico – she is calm and clinical in facing their final moments, ever the dutiful, sympathetic angel of mercy.
Golino’s directorial debut relishes the contrasts of its lead character, of the distant daughter and absent acquaintance, and the devoted but detached source of solace for the fatally afflicted. Scene by scene, the film pivots in tandem with its protagonist, crafting a complex portrait of a woman torn between two personas. When unhappy but otherwise healthy retired architect Carlo (Carlo Cecchi, Let It Be) seeks her assistance, the façade starts to fracture, with Irene uncomfortable with his motivations. Her increased involvement in his plight exposes her own deficiencies, both professional and personal.
Care and caution seethe in every scene of Honey, whether steeped in Irene’s risky trips and heady trysts, or showing the precise routine of her euthanising work. The troubles of both are always on display, yet the writer/director avoids passing judgement in adapting Mauro Covacich’s novel A nome tuo with co-scribes Francesca Marciano (A Five Star Life) and Valia Santella (Nina); instead, it is the toll Irene’s career takes – not just on those in her care, but on her own outlook – that guides the feature.
The intoxicatingly conflicted Trinca acts as the anchor – and it is in her mastery of nuance, as well as Golino’s confident passage from Hot Shots! beauty and Respiro star to accomplished auteurial voice in the making, that Honey is at its best. On screen, Trinca brings an edginess that always threatens to destabilise the feature’s fragility; off screen, Golino adds delicacy and subtlety that belies her directorial inexperience. Every aesthetic detail is crafted to heighten the empathetic, observational perspective, from patient imagery to poignant – albeit predictable – music choices. Mis-steps are taken, as the feature remains repetitive and immersed in a singular tone, but the contemplative atmosphere never wavers.
Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5
Honey (Miele)
Director: Valeria Golino
Italy / France, 2013, 96 mins
Lavazza Italian Film Festival
www.italianfilmfestival.com.au
Melbourne: 2 – 27 Oct
Brisbane: 3 – 22 Oct
Canberra: 8 Oct – 3 Nov
Sydney: 9 Oct – 3 Nov
Adelaide: 22 Oct – 11 Nov
Perth: 10 – 23 Oct
Byron Bay: 11 – 20 Oct
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