Kidnapped (Rapito) [2023]

 Marco Bellocchio’s baroque and magnetic film Kidnapped – made in the grand tradition of operatic and opulent historical melodramas – is a ferocious retelling of an unsettling true story from mid-19^th century papal history. Through this recounting of a very specific event – that of the abduction of a Jewish kid by the Vatican, under the direct order of Pope Pius IX, to raise him as a Christian – the Octogenarian Italian filmmaker captured as much that historic Italian milieu which was about to be radically transformed by the forthcoming Risorgimento, an event that’d received its most unforgettable cinematic representations in Visconti’s Senso and The Leopard, as a portrayal of theocratic tyranny, discrimination against those deemed subhuman and their ghettoization by those with political might, which remain even more violently topical and relevant today. The story begins in 1858 when Edgardo Mortara (played by Enea Sala as kid and Leonardo Maltese as young adult), the sixth child of a well-off Jewish family from Bologna, is forcibly taken away by the church and relocated to Rome as, seven years back, a maid had ostensibly baptised him in secrecy. The “Mortara Case” mobilized the Jewish community and gained international attention thanks to the relentless efforts of the devastated parents (magnificently played by Fausto Russo Alesi and Barbara Ronchi). The baleful Pius IX (enacted with slimy and feral brilliance by Paolo Pierobon), however, is unmoved, and ruthlessly ensures Edgardo’s continued indoctrination, which leads his growing up as a heartbreakingly conflicted young man who’s doomed to be neither here nor there. Filmed with stunning audiovisual and aesthetic flourishes, this rich and complex tapestry reached a feverish crescendo in Bellochhio’s hands before ending on a deeply poignant note.

Director: Marco Bellocchio

Genre: Drama/Historical Drama

Language: Italian

Country: Italy