See you sadness by Giovanni Virgilio (2025) Out of competition closes the #Taormina71 edition, pDEATUTA DALLA Q&A with Selene Caramazza, Nino Frassica and Alessio Vassallo
From our correspondent to Taormina Vittorio De Agrò (RS)
Plot: Aldo was given up by Alessia without a "talk", A phone call or a scene in front of the door. Alessia has simply disappeared. No message, No explanation. Ghosting pure.
Aldo comes out devastated, blocked in a limbo of without answers. The only one to stay close to him is Sonia, trusted friend and bandmate, trying to help him get up. It convinces him to be followed by a psychotherapist, Dr. Carlo. A meeting that will change the course of things - perhaps not in the most orthodox way, but still effective.
Review: The end of a love story is almost always unilateral. Someone leaves, someone is left. And in the middle we end incandescent emotions: anger, resentment, pain, obsession.
And no, It is not new. But it is deeply current.
In an era in which a click is enough to disappear from someone's life, Giovanni Virgilio - with his fourth film - chooses to face one of the most contemporary sentimental injuries: il ghosting. An unspoken farewell, A silence that weighs like a boulder. A mode so simple as to implement as it is difficult to undergo.
"Goodbye sadness" is a sweet and sour comedy, A delicate and personal reflection on the void that leaves a finished love without explanations. But it is also (and maybe above all) A story about the importance of asking for help when you get lost.
Aldo (Alessio Vassallo) he is a man in free fall. But unlike many other male protagonists who react with self -destruction in the cinema, Here is a small but important narrative gap: the awareness.
Friend Sonia (A good Selene Caramazza) it spurs him to undertake a path of therapy, who will lead him to meet Carlo (Nino Frassica), psychotherapist sui generis. From there, The plot takes an unexpected turn: The relationship between patient and therapist escapes the rules of clinical setting, and contaminated, It transforms ... into a friendship. And in that prediction Aldo finds himself.
Amorous melancholy is not a disease. It is part of the game. Overwhelms you, empty you, makes you feel alone. But like a wave, At one point he retires.
The film tells it with tenderness, without moralisms and without looking for easy guilty. It is not a question of fulfilling or condemning those who choose Ghosting, but to give voice to those who suffer it.
The Vassallo -Framassica -Caramazza trio works. There is alchemy, rhythm, sincerity in the dialogues. Frassic, in particular, gives his character a note of bizarre and humanity that makes Carlo memorable. An atypical therapist, Yup, but credible and paradoxically effective.
Virgil directs with measurement, without giving in to the temptation of the melodrama. The screenplay, Signed together with Manuela Gurgone and Luca Arcidiacono, He manages to keep emotion and irony in balance, Returning a kind look on a very serious theme.
The film reminds us that there is no right way to process abandonment. There are those who close at home, who pretends nothing, who lost, who finds himself. The important thing is not to do it alone. Sometimes a friend is enough. Or a psychologist to the Frassica.
"Goodbye sadness" is a sincere movie, which speaks to many and with modesty. And this, In a often shouted and self -referential cinematographic panorama, it's already something.
Vittorio De Agrò (RS)
Ed: the grand finale of this edition, who saw Tiziana Rocca resume the helm of the foreign event in the international eyelet of Sicilianity, It took place at the Antico Theater in Taormina with the award ceremony of Monica Bellucci undisputed icon