Two years after his parents divorced, seventeen-year-old Nicholas (Zen McGrath) cannot live with his mother anymore. The depression he feel never leaves him, and he can only find solace in childhoo
One of the most talented French authors, published all over the world, is Florian Zeller. Zeller easily made the transition from novels to theatre, becoming in a short time one of the most well-known French playwrights internationally. The further passage to film didn’t take much, with Zeller winning an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay with the film adaptation of his play The Father, which is also his debut film as a director.
His second feature, The Son, will premiere today at the Venice Film Festival, and is the adaptation of Zeller’s 2018 play of the same name, the last act and logical conclusion of his Family Trilogy started in 2010 with The Mother. The three plays explore the tragic side of familial bonds at the moment of their rupture, the moment when roles are what they used to be no longer. With The Mother, the only one of the three not yet transposed in film, Zeller questions the theme of motherly love and its possible pathological perversions with outstanding sharpness. In The Father, Zeller looks into the traumatic experience of a man addled by Alzheimer’s disease who must face and accept his destiny. The director, here, doesn’t stop at telling a story, but takes us into the story and has been exceedingly capable in making the audience feel all the experience in totalizing fashion. The protagonist of The Son, lastly, is Nicolas, a seventeen-year-old who succumbs to depression.
