![]() And Selene Caramazza and Simone Liberati, both in their debut performance as the leads in a feature film here, give tangible substance to their characters. And his portrayal of young men and women, of the stone and pure hearts of those from the working-class suburbs, is reminiscent of the crude Pasolinian poetry of Alì Blue Eyes by Claudio Giovannesi. Like Danieli, this is 37-year-old De Paolis’ debut feature film, which follows two short films screened at the Venice Film Festival and various video-art pieces. But just as that film doesn’t denounce Jehovah’s witnesses, Pure Hearts is a realistic coming-of-age account told through a passionate love story. The proximity of the film to the multi-award-winning Worldly Girl by Marco Danieli, a film from 2016, is pretty clear. Because, as first Kaj Nielsen then Eugenio Lecaldano taught us, there can be ethics without religion, and even without God we can distinguish between good and evil, the righteous and the unrighteous, the virtuous and the immoral. Two social backgrounds, one of violence and the other of acceptance and self-protection, merge and identify with one another. He and Alice cross paths once again, and their hormones get the better of the latter’s promise to stay a virgin. When his parents are evicted, Stefano rushes to their aid. They’re the same nomads that Marta and Alice bring presents and cast-offs for. He looks for an honest job and finds it as a parking attendant at a supermarket, abused and threatened by the gypsies in the adjacent field. But in spite of everything he is also pure of heart. Stefano has grown up and swum in these murky waters. The other world is home to the wild of heart, Stefano’s background: full of unemployed people characterised by their high-powered motorbikes, they live off of drug dealing and occasional robberies. In the first are the pure of heart who go to school, do honest jobs, engage in volunteer work and toe the line, exactly as Don Luca preaches. Straight away, young director Roberto De Paolis (the son of Valerio, who is distributing the film with Cinema), shows us two neighbouring but very different worlds in parallel. Stefano is what they call a chav in Rome, or rather someone from the urban or suburban working-class suburbs who behaves in an uncouth manner and uses copious amounts of dialect. ![]() It is when she goes to acquire a new phone in secret that Alice meets Stefano for the first time, played by Simone Liberati (who physically resembles a sort of James Franco from the suburbs). She has just confiscated her mobile phone following a “scandalous” exchange of text messages between her and a classmate of hers. ![]() Her mother Marta ( Barbora Bobulova) – a single woman who we sense has been subjected to a life of trickery and abandonment – is a steadfast churchgoer, and very uncompromising with her daughter. The group also includes almost 18-year-old Alice ( Selene Caramazza), the female protagonist of Pure Hearts, which has been selected for Directors’ Fortnight at the 70 th Cannes Film Festival. This pugnacious priest from the Roman suburbs is speaking to a group of young people preparing to “promise” to remain chaste until they are married. "Blessed be the pure of heart because they shall see God" explains Don Luca ( Stefano Fresi) as he quotes from the Sermon on the Mount. She experiences a deep sense of betrayal towards her ideals, which leads her to take an extreme decision in the hope of erasing her sin.Selene Caramazza and Simone Liberati in Pure Hearts But when they make love for the first time, Agnese’s illusion of purity is shattered. Their unexpected meeting engenders a sentiment of purity, made of little stolen moments and mutual help. He is a twenty-five year old man, with a violent temper and a difficult past behind, who works as a warden in a car park that borders with a gypsy camp. She is only seventeen, lives with her mother – a harsh but devoted woman and a regular church-goer – and is about to take a vow of chastity to last until marriage. Agnese and Stefano are profoundly different.
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