Padrenostro review – a deep dive through a director’s subconscious

Claudio Noce's very personal picture is a beautiful mess that views the harsh adult world from a child's perspective

As a child in the 1970s, writer-director Claudio Noce stood in the wings while a leftwing terrorist group - the Armed Proletarian Cells - targeted his father, Rome's deputy chief of police. The trauma, he says, harried him all his life before finally finding a catharsis of sorts with the making of Padrenostro, which competes for the top prize here in Venice. This, Noce's third feature, marks his moment of unburdening. Unsurprisingly, then, it's a personal picture, agonised and self-questioning, almost to a fault.

Noce's alter-ego is Valerio (Mattia Garaci), an angelic-looking 10-year-old with a low-grade heart murmur and a penchant for solitary walks and wild flights of fancy. But his immediate surroundings feel horribly real. Wounded in an assassination attempt, his father Alfonso (Pierfrancesco Favino) now carries a handgun in his bag and flinches every time the front doorbell rings. Valerio isn't sure what has happened or why, which naturally means that we're in the dark, too. For most of its run, Padrenostro elects to view the harsh adult world from a child's perspective. It's like What Maisie Knew crossed with a supergrass gangster film.