Marco Tullio Giordana wept when he received a Special Leopard at the 77th Locarno Film Festival—he called it the little sibling of the Golden Leopard he won in 1980 for his first film. He returned to Locarno to premiere La vita accanto before the world, and he made no secret of his pride. Surrounded by the cast and facing a packed PalaCinema audience, he spoke freely about how pleased he was with the result.
Adapted from Mariapia Veladiano's acclaimed 2010 novel of the same name, the work demanded careful reimagining. In the book, the protagonist is an "ugly" girl—a fact presented without question and without detailed description. But how do you render ugliness on film without becoming ridiculous or offensive? The screenplay (written by Giordana with Gloria Malatesta and Marco Bellocchio) found an elegant solution: the girl is born with a large red birthmark that spreads across one cheek.
Without slavishly copying the novel's visual grammar, Giordana preserved its core: the protagonist's physical mark renders her "different," but it is nothing more than a distraction—a way for one visible flaw to hide the family's invisible wounds.
The story unfolds in Vicenza in 1980. A couple (Valentina Bellè and Paolo Pierobon) lives in a grand palazzo in the city center that also houses his twin sister, a successful pianist (Sonia Bergamasco). They are expecting a daughter, and their joy curdles the moment she arrives. Rebecca is healthy and lovely. But a massive red birthmark—a deep angioma—spreads across part of her face. It cannot be removed.
The new mother withdraws. She dresses only in dark clothes. She refuses to leave the house, and refuses to let her daughter leave either—to protect her from the cruelty of strangers' eyes. She descends into something between depression and madness. Her maternal coldness becomes almost repulsive; yet we should try to understand her, as everyone around her fails to do.
The aunt too is contradictory. She dotes on Rebecca and encourages her musical gifts, yet seems bent on claiming the maternal role her sister-in-law has rejected. The father is a decent man utterly helpless in the emotional chaos he cannot control. Is he simply passive and incapable of compassion? Or is he hiding his own guilt?
Rebecca grows. We follow her through different ages, played by three actresses—the last a pianist named Beatrice Barison. But inside the family palazzo, pain and fear dominate everything. Her coming of age—the true heart of the film—must break through silence, secrets, trauma, and the hypocrisy of a family far more worried about others' judgment than its own happiness.
The novel, with its fragmentary structure and more hopeful voice (an adult narrator reflecting on her past with hard-won calm), paints a different picture. This film is a family drama with familiar contours, yet it gains real power by refusing to display ugliness—turning it instead into symbol, and showing with striking clarity how dread of difference can eat us alive: it teaches the eye to look beyond surfaces, to let reason, not appearance, be its guide.