The story of a man (Kim Rossi Stuart) reuniting with the disabled son (Andrea Rossi) whom he abandoned at birth. This was Italy's official entry for the Academy's Best Foreign Film award, which makes perfect sense: it's the same kind of clichéd, sentimental crap that usually takes home Oscar gold. By some miracle, the Academy skipped it over (another story of disability, The Sea Inside, won that year). The Keys to the House pulls out just about every cliché imaginable. The most obnoxious is perhaps the fact that the boy's mother died in childbirth - which is why the father has ignored him for 15 years. Like many films dealing with the disabled, it sees them mostly as objects to be dealt with. A woman whom the father befriends during the film (played by Charlotte Rampling) also has a disabled child, and at one point she admits that she wishes her daughter would die. The only difference between this movie and your standard American prestige picture is an overbearing score. There are a couple of decent scenes, but, for the most part, and I thank it for this, the film is instantly forgettable. Avoid.
Review of The Keys to the House
