Manilo Travaglini: era ora … ritorno Remi, dal film con Daniel Auteuil, dal romanzo di Hector Malot

Abandoned and adopted by a worker and a peasant, Remi (Maleaume Paquin) grows up not knowing his true origins. Economic difficulties bring his impromptu parents to entrust him to the care of the wandering artist Vitali (Daniel Auteuil), his first father figure, which allows him to discover also his singing skills. In the company of the little monkey Joli-Couer and the dog Capi, the two turn for France, until a turn perhaps will allow Remi to resume his fate. Remi is a new adaptation of “Senza famiglia”, the novel by Hector Malot that for 140 years has moved generations and generations, passing not only for cinema and TV in more than one case, but also through a famous anime from 1977 Tokyo Movie Shinsha, arrived in Italy shortly thereafter. The director nominated in this case is Antoine Blossier, shooter in the field of French commercial export cinema, with a horror and a juvenile comedy, then eclectic enough to know how to evaluate the right cut of an operation that seems to follow the wake of the successful relaunch of Belle & Sebastien live-action. It seemed to us, however, that Remi works better than both the last Belle & Sebastien and Heidi, who two years ago also tried to follow in the wake of these adaptations shared by similar themes and figures: relationship with nature and animals, urban European landscapes and peripheral more folkloristic, family bonds denied and reconquered, use of prominent actors next to the young protagonists (Tchéky Karyo in Belle & Sebastien, Bruno Ganz in Heidi, here Daniel Auteuil) and, as mentioned, the choice of a novel already passed an anime cult treatment. It is a way to reconcile the presence of the little ones in the room, to which these paradickensian stories have traditionally been addressed, with that of the forty-year-old parents, influenced by childhood memories. The good performance of Remi is due in part to a wide-ranging production rather curated in the locations, in part to a slightly less television set-up in taste (excluding the forced frame updated), in part to a guessed casting and even richer. In addition to Auteuil, who manages to go beyond the two-dimensionality of his Vitali, with an engaging presence and intonation, there are several veterans who illuminate the scene in secondary roles: Jacques Perrin, Virginie Ledoyen and Ludivine Sagnier. It is the confirmation of a particular attention to the faces, centered like that of the young protagonist Paquin and her friend Lise (Albane Masson). Simplifying the most twisted passages from novel of appendix, reducing but not eliminating the deaths of the animals (trauma for the writer in the vision of the soul), Blossier leads the ship in port touching the ropes correctly, with a skimming similar to that Polanski he applied to his Oliver Twist. The peers of Remi, 11 years, will appreciate.remi Tradotto e scritto da Manilo Travaglini