Ernesto is a winning, richly detailed film, a skillful blend of ironic humor and wistful sadness, political commentary and eroticism. Not surprisingly, the sexual angle has been the focus of the film’s promotion. But while there is a fair amount of sexual activity in the film, and most of it is gay, Ernesto is not a “gay” film. Director Salvatore Samperi is instead telling the story of an adolescent’s transition into society. Like the protagonist of Ermanno Olmi’s classic Il Posto (The Sound of Trumpets), Samperi’s Ernesto is a young man who almost unconsciously loses some of his soul as he takes his expected place in the adult world.
A 17-year-old Jewish office worker in pre-World War One Trieste, Ernesto is too bored and mischievous to be kept behind a desk, so his exasperated boss has him supervise the workmen. Ernesto strikes up a casual friendship with one of the laborers, and the two soon become lovers. Michele Placido, perhaps best known here for his riveting portrayal of the street performer in Marco Bellocchio’s Leap into the Void, is outstanding as the older workman who falls passionately in love with his youthful overseer. His very passion, however, is the relationship’s undoing. Ernesto refuses to reciprocate those feelings, not because of a lack of sexual interest, but because he instinctively realizes that to get through life safely and successfully, a person must not care too much about anything. Eventually, Ernesto provokes his boss into firing him, thus extricating himself from the demanding affair. Once “free,” Ernesto becomes involved with a younger boy, Ilio, but quickly abandons him for his twin sister Rachele. These two roles are executed by actress Lara Wendel, in a remarkably convincing and virtuosic performance.
Actor Martin Halm manages to make Ernesto likable despite his unpleasant behavior. Thanks to Halm, we’re constantly excusing Ernesto’s actions, expecting that at any moment he’ll do something genuinely decent. But that moment never comes. Instead, what we see is a young man who doesn’t so much think thoughts as try them on to see how they fit, and his wardrobe includes Judaism, socialism, capitalism, heterosexuality, and homosexuality. Ernesto is also a master at manipulating people through his own passivity – most notably when he tearfully confesses to his mother his homosexual affair, and then twists her forgiveness into an opportunity to hit her up for some money.
For Samperi, Ernesto is a model bourgeois, someone ready to drop any intellectual or emotional response that could distance him from social acceptance and success. What makes his character frightening is that he changes with neither conscious deliberation nor regret. Regrets are for the others whom Ernesto leaves behind. And while Samperi is clearly on the side of the rejected and abandoned, his film is by no means a mere diatribe against a social type. There’s an almost awed quality to Ernesto, a head-shaking wonder that this young man’s story really does take place every day throughout the world. As a result, Samperi doesn’t leave his audience in the comfortable position of simply rejecting Ernesto. Rather, he disturbs us into wondering about how we’ve failed others and ourselves. Any film that can be entertaining, provocative, full of surprises, and still get us to that point of self-examination is a work of rare value. Ernesto is such a film.
(This review first appeared in The Film Journal, October 28, 1983.)
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NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 