Cloro
Sundance Film Festival
Director: Lamberto Sanfelice

Cloro’s protagonist is 17-year-old Jenny (Sara Serraiocco), who must quit school to take a job as a maid at a hotel in order to take care of her brother, Fabrizio (Giorgio Colangeli). Dire economic circumstances have forced her family to move to a seaside mountain town in Italy—her father (Andrea Vergoni) lost his job and their home in Ostia. Jenny practiced competitive synchronized swimming—her passion—but this dream becomes deferred as she is mired in her erstwhile home once her father falls to extreme depression under the weight of guilt for his wife’s previous death. Jenny illicitly practices her routines in the hotel pool, but it’s an inferior form of practice amid bearing the burdens of adult responsibility, away from where she can nurture her dream to swim. Unfortunately, just as Jenny is trapped in this predicament, Cloro also entraps the viewer in a monotonous, flat screenplay. Sparse dialogue hinders Jenny’s character development, who’s solely characterized by her glum, undesirable-for-an-adolescent situation and her love and drive to swim. Jenny’s fling with the ski-lift operator, Ivan (Ivan Franek), doesn’t even manifest itself until an hour into the 94-minute film, and it’s quickly over. This film shows Director Lamberto Sanfelice’s ambition in making this feature-length drama, but there’s not enough content to warrant its length. In sum, it’s drawn-out with little arc to the story. –Alexander Ortega

Time: Saturday, Jan. 31 @ 4 p.m. Venue: Holiday Village Cinema 4, Park City