La Valigia (2014)

An intense opening few bars of the score guide us inside a cobwebbed and dilapidated building. Within is an old man who loathes white? Why? Well Heaven is always represented as a bright white light - and you never go there alive, do you? With his suitcase packed on his bed, he has the appearance of a man who wants to go somewhere, but also of one who hasn't been anywhere in a very long time. He opens it and is transposed into a younger version of himself - but he is still trapped in the same scenario, with only his memories and a drawing of a young woman to accompany him. His love, his wife, his daughter? More reminiscing - this time his young brother and soon his own youthful vigour with the football, his first chest hair... He's now a young man, playing with his brother, but no - he is still in the same room though now nimble enough to escape and we find him in a much more comfortable room where, well maybe he was just there all along? The stop motion animation here is gorgeous. The vivid imagination of the animators who depict a subject who gets younger as the film progresses works really well and in a counter-intuitive sense looks at a sort of reverse ageing process with all of the joy and fervour that is recalled by a man who has little left to look forward to now. Is he in a prison, or an hospital, in his own bed - or just dreaming?