Amazing how a simple, straightforward film shot in almost a documentary style can be seen in completely different ways by different people. The Keys to the House is a strangely moving, yet unsentimental tale about how real people react when confronted with both trauma and disability. Some stay and carry the burden. Others run away. We all think we would stay, but how sure are we? Once the decision is made to run, consciously or otherwise, how do we come back? When there is no direct contact, the avoided lessens in personal value; but does what we avoid truly go away? Do we really want it to?
The main protagonists in the film are a disabled boy and the father who abandoned him at birth. Many reviews were judgmental of the father's rejection of a disabled child,although this was not a factor in the actual abandonment - both he and the boy's mother were teenagers when she became pregnant. The fact that she died giving birth to his child fed his guilt, imagined or not, that he was to blame for her death. He barely stayed with her mother and sister at the hospital to hear what happened to the baby.
That reaction and his continued refusal to try to at least see his son, eventually raised by the mother's sister and her husband, smacks of fear and immaturity rather than cold-hearted rejection. He is introduced to us as the impossibly perfect Kim Rossi Stuart, an actor so beautiful we are immediately disdainful of him - did he leave because the child was not as perfect as he? We are suspicious of his motives in suddenly coming into the boy's life after 15 years although he is not the person to initiate contact.
The boy's doctors have suggested that meeting his birth father may help speed effectiveness of the boy's developmental therapy, so he is literally cornered into it by the uncle, who against his wife's wishes arranges to have the father escort the boy to specialized therapy in Germany. It is clear that the uncle does this out of love for the boy, but why does the father agree to do it?
In subtle ways, we see he is not without feeling for the boy - he is hesitant to touch him yet devours him with his eyes; as the story progresses, his contact becomes increasingly tactile - as one reviewer said, stroking him almost as if he were a pet.
The choice of actors is brilliant for the same reasons another reviewer found unpalatable - in real life, disabled people can come from the most physically "perfect" human specimens - in this case the child's disability was as a result of birth trauma. The father is as emotionally damaged as the son is physically - they both seem to need each other on an almost primal level.
It minimizes the intelligence of both the actor (Andrea Rossi)and his character Paolo, the son, not to recognize this. Mood swings and repetition do not negate a functioning heart or mind in Paolo; he is aware of more than we think. The actor Andrea Rossi (is he related to Kim Rossi Stuart?) is brilliant as Paolo; that he is also afflicted with muscular dystrophy makes his performance even more affecting. I reject the review that suggests this disability as the reason we should cheer his acting, however; MUSCULAR dystrophy does not affect the mind (Steven Hawking?) even if the director supposedly fed him lines off-camera, his innate ability (I thought he was ACTING the physical part) is what actually made Paolo believable as a character.
As always, Charlotte Rampling is excellent as the mother of another patient in Paolo's hospital. She has taken on her daughter's disability as her life's-work. Yet even she is human and has wished to run away. The difference between the parents is that she continues to do, despite the occasional lapse. Paolo's father has to grow up and come to terms with the reality of the disability as well as his newfound love for his son as a person before they can move on as father and son. That he is willing to continue to try, after failing several times, is his most redeeming factor in the movie.
The main protagonists in the film are a disabled boy and the father who abandoned him at birth. Many reviews were judgmental of the father's rejection of a disabled child,although this was not a factor in the actual abandonment - both he and the boy's mother were teenagers when she became pregnant. The fact that she died giving birth to his child fed his guilt, imagined or not, that he was to blame for her death. He barely stayed with her mother and sister at the hospital to hear what happened to the baby.
That reaction and his continued refusal to try to at least see his son, eventually raised by the mother's sister and her husband, smacks of fear and immaturity rather than cold-hearted rejection. He is introduced to us as the impossibly perfect Kim Rossi Stuart, an actor so beautiful we are immediately disdainful of him - did he leave because the child was not as perfect as he? We are suspicious of his motives in suddenly coming into the boy's life after 15 years although he is not the person to initiate contact.
The boy's doctors have suggested that meeting his birth father may help speed effectiveness of the boy's developmental therapy, so he is literally cornered into it by the uncle, who against his wife's wishes arranges to have the father escort the boy to specialized therapy in Germany. It is clear that the uncle does this out of love for the boy, but why does the father agree to do it?
In subtle ways, we see he is not without feeling for the boy - he is hesitant to touch him yet devours him with his eyes; as the story progresses, his contact becomes increasingly tactile - as one reviewer said, stroking him almost as if he were a pet.
The choice of actors is brilliant for the same reasons another reviewer found unpalatable - in real life, disabled people can come from the most physically "perfect" human specimens - in this case the child's disability was as a result of birth trauma. The father is as emotionally damaged as the son is physically - they both seem to need each other on an almost primal level.
It minimizes the intelligence of both the actor (Andrea Rossi)and his character Paolo, the son, not to recognize this. Mood swings and repetition do not negate a functioning heart or mind in Paolo; he is aware of more than we think. The actor Andrea Rossi (is he related to Kim Rossi Stuart?) is brilliant as Paolo; that he is also afflicted with muscular dystrophy makes his performance even more affecting. I reject the review that suggests this disability as the reason we should cheer his acting, however; MUSCULAR dystrophy does not affect the mind (Steven Hawking?) even if the director supposedly fed him lines off-camera, his innate ability (I thought he was ACTING the physical part) is what actually made Paolo believable as a character.
As always, Charlotte Rampling is excellent as the mother of another patient in Paolo's hospital. She has taken on her daughter's disability as her life's-work. Yet even she is human and has wished to run away. The difference between the parents is that she continues to do, despite the occasional lapse. Paolo's father has to grow up and come to terms with the reality of the disability as well as his newfound love for his son as a person before they can move on as father and son. That he is willing to continue to try, after failing several times, is his most redeeming factor in the movie.