Il Colibri (The Hummingbird, 2022)
Il Colibri (aka The Hummingbird) is the adaptation of the international bestseller by Italian author Sandro Veronesi, who also won the Premio Stregia with it.
This adaptation, directed by Francesca Archibugi and starring Pierfrancesco Favino, Kasia Smutniak and Berenice Bejo, runs for just over two hours, but while watching I got the feeling it should have been at least an hour longer to do justice to the source material.
The movie is so restless, jumping through time and many different storylines, it feels like it was edited to within an inch of its life. I could be wrong, but I got the idea a lot of material was left on the cutting floor.
It’s a shame because the main story is interesting enough, the actors are fine and production design and cinematography are quite lovely.
Il Colibri follows the path of medical doctor Marco Carrera (Favino), from his childhood in the 1970’s to the present day. And also that of the two most important women in his life: his wife Marina Molitor (Smutniak), a passionate woman who longs for more excitement than the good doctor can give her. Maybe that’s because he’s deeply in love with Luisa Lattes (Bejo), who he met as a child when she was his neighbor during their respective family’s vacations on the coast of Tuscany. They never consummated their feelings for each other but their bond goes way deeper than Marco’s relationship with Maria, who suspects Marco of infidelity and in turn sleeps around.
Had the movie simply focused on this bizarre love triangle I think it could have been pretty great. But there is so much else going on, so many side characters to attend to - Nanni Moretti, to name just one, plays a semi-important role as a psychiatrist - and so many story strands that are barely touched upon. At one point Marco is taken into custody because he is mistaken for a terrorist, but it serves no purpose to the plot and it is never mentioned again. And late in the movie he suddenly becomes a brilliant card player, capable of winning large sums of money. It feels like the filmmakers just wanted to cram everything in.
I’m sure in the book - that won the Italian equivalent of the Booker Prize - it all makes sense. And if you’ve read it the story is probably easier to follow, but scratch that idea about a three hour movie version: Il Colibri would probably have worked best as a six-part limited series.
Note: After premiering in Toronto and as the opening film of the Rome film festival last year, the movie is making its way around the globe. It is released in The Netherlands this week.