\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThere is not much more to the secluded Italian village of Remis, the setting for Paolo Strippoli\u2018s crackling supernatural horror \u201cThe Holy Boy,\u201d than the road that runs through it, a high school, a tavern and the low-roofed dwellings that house an unusually contented community. Remis is such a happy place, in fact, that the town motto is \u201cValley of Smiles.\u201d But it\u2019s also ordinary, dull even \u2014 the screenplay, co-written by Strippoli, Jacopo Del Giudice and Milo Tissone, so intelligently commingles the area\u2019s uncanny energies with plausible reality, that you can\u2019t be sure that, driving on a dark night, you might not make a wrong turn and end up in this fictional place. If that happens, maybe don\u2019t dawdle.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThen again, perhaps you\u2019d have no choice, like ex-champion judo star Sergio Rossetti (a superbly rumpled Michele Riondino) who has been lured by a temp job teaching PE in the local school. It\u2019s hardly a plum assignment, but Sergio is trying to outrun his grief and guilt over a recent loss, and maybe thinks it will not find him here. Certainly his arrival is big news in a small town. The teachers line up to greet him and the students have painted a welcome banner celebrating his peak judo victory. Sergio tears it down and makes the class run laps.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tBut he is not by nature a dour man, and Riondino plants a little spark of wit deep in the character\u2019s self-loathing. Later, one of his students, Matteo (excellent newcomer Giulio Feltri), will complain \u201cYou\u2019re always joking around.\u201d To which Sergio replies, \u201cI used to, and now I am again, thanks to you.\u201d Miraculously, Matteo has taken his pain away. That first night in Remis, blustering and drunk, Sergio\u2019s trauma had been so obvious to Michela (Romana Maggiore Vergano) the sympathetic bartender in the local pub, that she let him in on the town secret. Matteo, a strange, solitary 15-year-old with a stripe of albinism affecting one temple, one eyebrow and half a set of eyelashes, has the ability to remove a tormented soul\u2019s unhappiness, simply by hugging them. At regular ceremonies run by local priest Don Attilo (Robero Citran) and funded via a discreet donation basket, Matteo hugs the townspeople one by one, according to a strict schedule organized by his manager father, Mauro (Paolo Pierobon). He does not erase their memories. He simply makes the memories not hurt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAs a community, Remis has been badly hurt. A decade and a half prior, a train derailment in the region cost dozens of lives, and many locals lost loved ones. We hear about it via the radio reports playing during the film\u2019s terrifically yikes prologue: As news of the mounting casualty count burbles in the background, a mother is trying the old airplane routine to get her baby to eat his food. Suddenly, mid-vrooom, her expression changes to one of dawning fear and she drops to the floor. Was there \u2014 a ghastly thought \u2014 something in the offscreen baby\u2019s gaze that has stopped her heart dead in her chest? Oh wait, no. It\u2019s much worse than that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThat one-two rhythm whereby one bad-enough thing happens only to immediately be followed by something more dreadful, is repeated throughout, and gives a story that is dark in its themes a vibe of mordant playfulness in its presentation. And nowhere is the double-punch more evident than in the gradual exploration of Matteo\u2019s other, less benign, superpower which, let\u2019s just say, opens up all sorts of questions about consent and violation. Matteo is holy perhaps, but he\u2019s also a friendless 15-year-old freak-show with awakening sexual urges and the ability to explore them in a uniquely destructive but untraceable manner. And how must it feel to be a lonely teenager with a gay crush on an antagonistic classmate, who also happens to be worshipped as a near-messiah? Only Sergio, not just grateful for Matteo\u2019s analgesic embrace, but also using him to fill the son-shaped hole in his own life, cares to ask.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThere\u2019s a little bit of \u201cCarrie\u201d and \u201cThe Omen\u201d here, a hint of \u201cThe Village,\u201d and a nod, in DP Cristiano di Nicola\u2019s crisp yet moody cinematography, to restrained Scandi-horrors like \u201cLet the Right One In\u201d and \u201cThe Innocents.\u201d\u00a0 But \u201cThe Holy Boy\u201d is its own thing, maintaining its moral ambivalence even as it ramps up to a spectacular finale. Plot and character are knotted elegantly around a surprisingly melancholic core, that reminds us we need pain in our lives, even when our lives are made unlivable by that pain. Matteo, haloed in the promise of an end to all suffering, must seem like an angel, but sometimes the ultimate curse is to get exactly what you think you want. The devil was once an angel too, and perhaps he was 15 when he fell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is not much more to the secluded Italian village of Remis, the setting for Paolo Strippoli\u2018s crackling supernatural horror \u201cThe Holy Boy,\u201d than the road that runs through it, a high school, a tavern and the low-roofed dwellings that house an unusually contented community. Remis is such a happy place, in fact, that the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[11301,11299,11300,2596],"class_list":{"0":"post-18493","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-chiller","9":"tag-clever","10":"tag-creepy","11":"tag-italian"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}