Nessun Dolore review – sketchy Roman fable of liberal white guilt

Venice film festival
A white man’s eyes are opened to cruelty and racism when a young boy is thrust into his life in Gianni Amelio’s bold but ultimately naive drama

From the heart of Rome, and broadly in an Italian tradition of sentimentalist realism, film-maker Gianni Amelio brings us a fairytale of the city, about the liberal white guilt of those who live a prosperous pain-free existence and those whom Frantz Fanon called the wretched of the earth.

There is some incidental interest and the film is beautifully shot, but finally it buckles under the weight of its own preposterousness and naivety. It is also sketchy about how and why people go into and come out of prison; the final shot, a supposedly heartwarming visionary moment of redemption and reconciliation, looks absurd.