Laura Morante brings an unsparing directness to family drama. We value the force of her work in The Son's Room, where she makes Paola's distress hard to watch without turning her into someone who explains everybody else's feelings.
Fi1m perspective
In The Son's Room (2001), Laura Morante keeps drawing our attention away from Giovanni and back to Paola. Nanni Moretti leaves room for her distress without asking her to explain the household's feelings. We found her suffering difficult to watch because Morante makes it matter even when the family cannot ease it. She gives a patient film some of its least comfortable moments.
Her breakthrough was the title role in Moretti's Bianca (1984), followed by work across French and Italian cinema. A background in dance informs her physical, gestural approach, though her delivery is generally unmannered. She is often cast as a wife or mother dealing with loss, frustration or self-doubt. That recurring introspection can become a restriction, leaving an actor with too many similar tasks.
In The Son's Room, the family feels credible before grief puts it under strain. Morante helps keep the household recognisable when its members cannot make things easier for one another. We still sometimes want more distance from Giovanni, and Nicola Piovani's music does too much persuading in places. Paola keeps demanding our attention even when the film seems more interested in him.
Gabriele Muccino's domestic drama Remember Me, My Love (2003) and Carlo Verdone's comedy-drama Love Is Eternal While It Lasts (2004) offer other routes into her work. She moved into directing with Cherry on the Cake (2012), a romantic comedy in which she also stars, and followed it with Assolo (2016). Both films combine psychological observation with romantic-comedy structures, keeping her interest in troubled inner lives within lighter forms. That is a useful corrective to the impression that grief is all she has to offer. For a first encounter, though, choose The Son's Room, with the caveat that the music sometimes insists on feelings Morante has already made clear.
Biography
Laura Morante is an Italian actress. Born on 21 August 1956 in Santa Fiora, Tuscany, she is the daughter of Marcello Morante, brother of the novelist Elsa Morante.
She began her career as a dancer and made her stage debut at 18 in the company of Carmelo Bene. Her film debut came in Oggetti smarriti (1980), directed by Giuseppe Bertolucci. She gained prominence with the title role in Nanni Moretti's Bianca (1984).
Morante won the David di Donatello Award for Best Actress for her performance as Paola in Moretti's The Son's Room (2001). She has appeared in numerous Italian and European films, including L'amore è eterno finché dura (2004), and has also directed features such as Cherry on the Cake (2012).
