Sempre le stesse cose

Five women filmed over five years: although the figures could herald an Oulipian exercise, Sempre le stesse cose is a long-term chronicle of the daily life of four generations (the most recent one is still suckling) that live in the confines of a small ground-floor flat in the Neapolitan district of Sanità. The main room serves as a miniature theatre, with a single window that opens likea curtain to let in the call of the travelling baker. But as the title clearly indicates, the film’s approach shuns all complacent clichés. Relations between Giovanna and her grandmother grow tense, as we gradually understand that the flat is the women’s realm: the men, doddery, imprisoned or exiled without their wife, are only present off-screen, as if the choice of mostly filming the main room produced a centrifugal effect. Housework, tidying away the folding beds, vegetable peeling in front of a TV series or visiting a loud-mouthed cousin: the repetition of the same chores produces a striking jump-cut effect years apart. Even after a lengthy omission covering a death and a birth, the place seems so immutable that replacing a sofa-bed is a dramatic upheaval. The film infuses the cycle of pregnancies and the young women’s premature departures with what seems to be an almost legendary temporality, transcending social or psychological influences alike. (Charlotte Garson)