The new Italian film A Heart Elsewhere was a fine, delicate film, written and directed by Pupi Avati.

Avati has charted a poignant journey for his main character, Nello Balocchi. Nello’s wealthy family is desperate to see him hitched. He is shy and plain looking and his ambitious father want to see him wed and hopefully produce a heir for the family’s successful business, a Papal tailor’s shop in Rome. Nello is sent away from the family’s nest to take up a teaching post in Bologna in the hope that he’ll find someone.

It was easy to get inside Nello’s journey. There were so many landmarks …His battle with his madly possessive and condescending family, his terrible shyness and physical awkwardness, his first, intense, deeply fraught love affair with a beautiful, young blind woman, Angela.

The performances were finely tuned. Neri Marcore portrayed Nello as a soft voiced, intellectual, deeply sympathetic young man. Spanish model Vanessa Incontrada played Angela, the object of his affections. Incontrada’s performance was well realised, portraying as a willful, self centred, vain young woman who also had to contend with a dominating parent.

Avati’s film rounds off elegantly in a heart felt story that has been told with fine craft.

(c) David Kary