This morning, before entering the press screening of "Viaggio Segreto", I was saying to a fellow critic I was glad that at this first Roma Film Festival the Italian films presented were all surprisingly good and that I hadn't seen a bad one yet. I was wrong: there is a bad Italian film at the festival, and its name is Viaggio Segreto. Roberto Andò's direction left me a good impression; I didn't despised the soundtrack either. All the rest was hopeless. First of all, the film was a bore fest. I just kept on yawning and yawning, and hoping it would end soon. Alessio Boni shows incredibly wooden acting: he just has one perplexed, suffering expression, which is the same is he laughing, crying or dancing with a naked woman. Valeria Solarino is also bad, an you wonder what the hell is Emir Kosturica doing in this film. The script is a mess, with a lot of useless scenes, and the characters, especially Boni's, act incoherently. You just stay there and wonder why. Some characters are useless (ex. padre Angelo), almost everyone is underdeveloped, especially Ale (Solarino), even if she was the key character of the film. The script is full of pretentious, meant to be profound sentences that actually mean nothing, which is extremely irritating. The plot is basically a melodrama, but the film doesn't transmit any emotions. This is the perfect specimen of that collection of pretentious Italian films dealing with family drama, dark secrets etc in which Boni often appears. My suggestion is to avoid this film. My rating is 4.5/10
