Con gli occhi chiusi

The powerful Domenico Rosi owns a farmyard in the Chianti district. His 14 year old son is sitting at his father's trattoria, the source of his father's wealth, trying to learn to read. Rosi thinks that this is unnecessary as he managed to make his fortune without studying. He accuses his romantically inclined son of being a weakling. Infatuated and awkward Pietro falls madly in love with Ghisola, the daughter of one of his father's employees. Their desperate need for each other and their stormy relationship begins whilst they are still teenagers. Ghisola is sent away to another district by Pietro's tyrannical father. When they meet again several years later Ghisola is working at a brothel. Everyone knows this apart from Pietro who decides to marry her. Closed Eyes is set at the end of the nineteenth century in the Toscan countryside, close to Siena. It is Francesca Archibugi's fourth film and is based on a novel by the writer, and compatriot, Federigo Tozzi (1883-1920).The narrative focuses on the contrast between Ghisola's clear-sightedness and Pietro's dreamy attitude to life. Their actual seeing is a reaccuring theme. Pietro suffers from a symbolic near-sightedness which makes his perception of the world blurred. Ghisola and Pietro's habit of constantly seeing past each other means that something remains unresolved. The title of the film alludes to Ghisola's indifference to and suspicion of love: whilst the other women willingly fantasize about what can happen in the bedroom, her only comment is ''I aIways keep my eyes closed.'' Parallel to the love story, an historical-political retrospective is shown from an important historical period for the Italian worker. Farmers christen their children with optimistic names such as Libera. Archibugi pays tribute to her literary original and often makes references to film favorites. Her style is reminiscent of the Taviani brothers' film Night of the Shooting Stars (1981). The same spreading, yellow Toscan fields and even ''their'' Margarita Lozano is included in the cast, as if a direct reference by Archibugi to the brothers. Most of Tozzi's work is autobiographicaI, as is the case with Closed Eyes. Federigo Tozzi was born in Siena and was an innkeeper's son. He was frail, both physically and mentally, as Pietro. He suffered from his father's despotism and only received an education under protest. In literature Tozzi represented a reserved psychological realism which was overshadowed by Marinetti's futuristic manifesto, as was much in Italy at that time. Francesca Archibugi has succeeded in preserving his prose-old-fashioned, unadorned and simple, with an interest for the pathological aspects of man. JR