08/02/2022 - Co-helmed by Alessio De Leonardis, singer Fabrizio Moro’s directorial debut is a film about boxing which goes heavy on stereotypes and metaphors but which fascinates on account of its honesty

Bang bang. With just a couple of shots, the two killers on board a moped take out a debtor who’s fallen behind with his payments. It’s the beginning of the 1990s in the Roman working-class suburb of Quarticciolo and Ghiaccio [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which is screening in Italian cinemas on 7, 8 and 9 February via Vision Distribution, marks the directorial debut of the pop rock singer-songwriter Fabrizio Moro, who wrote and directed the film alongside Alessio De Leonardis, having already directed several of the music videos which accompany his songs (Moro is also responsible for the song Sei tu which features in the film’s soundtrack). Fast forward a few years and the victim’s wife (Lidia Vitale) is still paying off her husband’s debts to the mafia, while her son Giorgio (Giacomo Ferrara) has inherited just one thing from his dad: a football shirt with the words “Totti 10” printed on it. We see him keeping fit by running through the neighbourhood’s streets one minute and lighting up a cigarette outside the gym the next. Only one fight stands in the way of him becoming a professional boxer, but Giorgio insists on snorting and selling coke while his mother thinks he’s at job interviews. His trainer (Vinicio Marchioni, The Day and the Night) is a failed boxer who sees in this boy an opportunity to finally win at life rather than waking up at 4am to deliver crates of fruits to wholesale markets before opening up the gym at 6.

Perfectly faithful to the subgenre made sublime by Scorsese with actors De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank, Robert Wise with Paul Newman, Michael Mann and Will Smith, and David O. Russell with Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale, to name just a few winning combinations, Ghiaccio is a film about falls, redemption and sacrifice. Here too, the boxing ring acts as a metaphor for life, made clear from the outset when the following words appear on screen: "Boxing isn’t just a sport; it’s a way of life. A fighter is a fighter. Always. Especially outside of the ring”. So as Giorgio readies himself for that battle and the mafia boss who rigs boxing matches settle his debts for him before asking him to fall in the third round, our youngster has to make a decision (“when they force you into a corner, you have to hit back”): in an environment determined to turn him bad at any cost, which side should he take?

Encompassing arguments between gangsters on the meanings of nicknames (Tarantino aside, criminals really do have these discussions) and flirty encounters with a local girl (Beatrice Bartoni), the films hurtles forwards like a well-aimed jab, based on a screenplay bursting with rhetoric, some of which is inspired by moments from Fabrizio Moro’s own life: the ice metaphor which lends the film its title, for one, and what it has to say about fear, love, winning and losing. The directorial approach has failed to avoid stereotypes, but Simone Zampagni’s mellow and saturated photography which captures the details and various atmospheres of peripheral Rome during that time, Gaspare De Pascali’s set design and Luigi Mearelli’s editing all serve to shore up camera movements which prioritise close-ups and successfully convey the dynamism of fight scenes in the ring. It’s a tidy little film, fair like a “clean” fight, aimed at younger audiences who know to embrace the teachings of a sport relegated to the sidelines and who can appreciate the wonderful chemistry at work between the two protagonists Marchioni and Ferrara, and the months spent training with middleweight WBA world champion Giovanni De Carolis.

Ghiaccio is produced by La casa rossa and Tenderstories in collaboration with Vision Distribution, and in association with Rome’s Università Telematica San Raffaele, SKY and RTI.

(Translated from Italian)