If you were told the premise of The Keys To The House - a guilt-ridden father attempts to bond with the disabled teenage son he hasn't seen since birth - you'd be forgiven for fearing the sentimental worst. However Italian writer/director Gianni Amelio intelligently steers clear of lachrymose speeches, swelling orchestral music, and cheap redemption and instead probes away at the ambivalent feelings of parents towards their handicapped off-spring.
Inspired by an autobiographical novel Born Twice, this European co-production mainly unfolds in Berlin, where the 15-year-old Paolo (Andrea Rossi) undergoes a punishing programme of rehabilitation at a hospital. And it's at this clinic that his father Gianni (a plausibly uncertain Kim Rossi Stuart) encounters a Frenchwoman Nicole (Charlotte Rampling), the mother of an even more disabled child, who warns him, "Prepare yourself for suffering."
"THERE'S A DELIBERATE DRABNESS"
So upset is Gianni at the way one of the German physiotherapists treats Paolo during a particular exercise, that he decides to take him away from this medical environment and to visit the boy's female pen-pal in Norway.
There's a deliberate drabness to the look of The Keys To The House - grey is the dominant colour here - and Amelio favours close-up and medium shots concentrating on the gestures, touches, and looks of the characters in their everyday interactions. However it's Rossi, himself disabled, who movingly conveys the joyful, charming, and sometimes exasperating sides of his vibrant character.
In Italian with English subtitles.
The Keys To The House (Le Chiavi Di Casa) (2005)
