WOMB

Rebecca and Tommy are two nine-year-old children. One day they meet by the sea and a particular connection immediately arises between them, which soon turns into a sweet and tender childhood love story. They spend entire days together, but soon this routine will be interrupted due to little Rebecca's departure for Japan to join her mother. After twelve very long years, her studies completed, Rebecca returns from Japan and her first thought is to go visit Tommy. They meet again and despite the years that have passed, it seems that nothing has changed between them; any feeling and attraction seems to have remained unchanged, even accentuated. But once again, their passion will be short-lived because Tommy is killed by a reckless driver in a violent car accident. Torn by grief, Rebecca turns to the Department of Genetic Cloning to have Tommy's clone implanted in her womb with the idea of raising him as a son and having him always close by. The years pass quickly and Tommy, Rebecca's son, is now close to adulthood when he begins to notice something controversial in his relationship with his mother. "I'll wait for you as long as necessary!" says a little note written by little Tommy, then placed in a matchbox, right after learning of Rebecca's departure for Japan. The same note is destined to be found and read by Rebecca, twelve years later, following the definitive loss of her beloved Tommy. An old saying states that there is no remedy for death, and it is precisely this that plunges Rebecca into despair after the sad event that has made that long wait aimed exclusively at waiting for the day when it would be possible for her to reunite with her beloved or, to put it with Plato, with her scattered half. But is it really true that there is no remedy for death? Perhaps in the past yes, but (fantasy) science has begun to dictate new rules so that giving and taking life is no longer a single privilege of "he who moves all through the universe penetrates, and shines in one part more or less elsewhere." Death cannot yet be defeated, but it can certainly be fought and hindered. Rebecca knows this very well and at the moment she decides to contact the Department of Genetic Cloning, she is fully aware that she can get her Tommy back ("hers" now more than before), the only thing needed is a little patience so that Tommy grows up and regains the lost age. Again, then, an "I'll wait for you as long as necessary!" that is no longer a note enclosed in a matchbox but a living thought, at times immoral, of a woman willing to do anything to get back what fate has cruelly taken away from her. Waiting is undoubtedly the key to reading "Womb" which takes on the traits of a bet against time but without any rush. Everything is aimed at that moment, inevitable and unique, when Rebecca can finally get what she has desired for years without ever achieving it due to an adverse fate. It does not matter to judge how much immorality there is in Rebecca's decision to want to raise in her womb the father of her son, what matters is the restoration and achievement of that single ideal that has managed to give meaning to Rebecca's entire existence and which arose, by chance or destiny, on that day by the sea when she first met little Tommy. In "Womb", everything contributes to fueling and highlighting the tedious sense of waiting, particularly the suggestive locations chosen to serve as a backdrop to the drama: desert landscapes bathed by the sea and dominated by a constantly leaden sky that makes all days the same, all marked by a silence often deafening in which the only "noise" is the relentless crashing of the waves that break all in the same way on the beach. Time passes and the action unfolds over many years, but everything appears static to us and nothing seems subject to change except Tommy, Rebecca's son. The feeling is that of seeing a drama set in a non-place, a sort of limbo, where time seems to have stopped and ready to restart only at the moment when the initial situation is restored: Tommy adult. In this regard, it does not bother at all to see Rebecca, played by a magnificent and talented Eva Green, not age at all despite the passage of many years because "Womb" is a conceptual film before being narrative. The direction of the Hungarian Benedek Fliegauf is very dry, essential, and inclined to accentuate the staticity of the situation. It relies on a minimal editing that tends to privilege, in the best European tradition, long shots entrusted to equally long framings. Masterful is the use of silence as a communicative tool that gives particular intensity to each look, to each gesture. Because "Womb" is a science fiction drama, but before that, it is a romantic film and as such it moves more than many sentimental films that have left their mark in cinema history (the sometimes awkward reunion between Rebecca and Tommy after twelve years, the game on the beach between Rebecca and her son Tommy aged nine, are moments that undoubtedly succeed in touching sensitive strings in the viewer). A romantic film, with a dramatic backdrop, that manages to generate a joyful fusion between classic themes dear to a certain type of science fiction (cloning), philosophical and religious concepts related to the theme of reincarnation as an evolving instrument, and even concepts inherited directly from Greek mythology. A fascinating film like few others, moving and poignant at the same time, and capable of touching the masterpiece if only it had ended a couple of minutes earlier. In any case, a must-see.