Brief
Skip to main content Skip to navigation Close dialogue 1 / 1 Next image Previous image Toggle caption Print subscriptions Search jobs Sign in Eur Europe edition UK edition US edition Australia edition International edition The Guardian - Back to home The Guardian News Opinion Sport Culture Lifestyle Show more Hide expanded menu News View all News World news UK news Climate crisis Ukraine Environment Science Global development Football Tech Business Obituaries Opinion View all Opinion The Guardian view Columnists Cartoons Opinion videos Letters Sport View all Sport Football Cricket Rugby union Tennis Cycling F1 Golf US sports Culture View all Culture Books Music TV & radio Art & design Film Games Classical Stage Lifestyle View all Lifestyle Fashion Food Recipes Love & sex Health & fitness Home & garden Women Men Family Travel Money Search input google-search Search Support us Print subscriptions Search jobs Holidays Digital Archive Guardian Licensing Live events About Us The Guardian app Video Podcasts Pictures Newsletters Today's paper Inside the Guardian Guardian Weekly Crosswords Wordiply Corrections Tips Search input google-search Search Search jobs Holidays Digital Archive Guardian Licensing Live events About Us Books Music TV & radio Art & design Film Games Classical Stage Unsure … Toni Servillo and Lorenzo Perrotta in Scherzetto. Photograph: courtesy Venice film festival View image in fullscreen Unsure … Toni Servillo and Lorenzo Perrotta in Scherzetto. Photograph: courtesy Venice film festival Film Review Scherzetto review – Toni Servillo brings gravitas to a dithering Neapolitan ghost story Venice film festival The Venice fixture plays an illustrator haunted by his boyhood in Mario Martone’s part spooky, part sentimental oddity Peter Bradshaw Thu 10 Sep 2026 21.45 CEST Last modified on Thu 10 Sep 2026 21.46 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google I t’s always good to see the veteran Italian star Toni Servillo at Venice; in fact, the festival is pretty much unthinkable without him. But this initially promising prospect – adapted from a novel by Domenico Starnone – is a minor, quibbling tonal oddity, unsure if it wants to be scary or sentimental. Servillo lends it as much gravitas as he can: his mere presence is valuable ballast and the streetscape scenes of Naples are handled with a connoisseur’s touch by director Mario Martone, whose previous Naples-set movie Nostalgia was far superior. Daniele (played by Servillo) is a septuagenarian book illustrator whose old-fashioned, hand-drawn artistry is something he testily treasures. He has come back to his family home in Naples, to the gloomy apartment where he was brought up, just behind the train station, and where his grownup daughter Betta (Serena Rossi) now lives with her husband and their five-year-old son Mario (newcomer Lorenzo Perrotta), who is adorable and as bright as a button, but also borderline insufferable. Daniele has agreed to babysit little Mario while Betta and her husband go off on a much-needed restorative weekend break. Daniele thinks that he can use this time to work on his new project while Mario quietly reads or colours. He is working on illustrations for a new edition of Henry James’s ghost story The Jolly Corner – which the film perhaps partly echoes in mood. But impish Mario won’t keep quiet and Daniele has problems of his own. He suspects that his drawings have become too dark, too gloomy: his initial work for the James story has already been rejected on this basis. And annoyingly, little Mario has artlessly pointed out that his illustrations for a new edition of The Odyssey are very dark, something Daniele at first suspected was a problem in the print. ‘Our bond is private. Some things have to stay between us’: Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo on smoking, cinema and secrets Read more Left alone with the kid and his doubts, Daniele starts brooding on the ghosts of the past: all the family members with whom he once had to share this little flat – although their “ghost” apparitions are neither satisfactorily scary nor dramatically informative. We never really get a full sense of their relationships. Most of all, Daniele’s ancient boyhood dread of the flat’s little balcony has been reawakened, a tiny, vertiginous ledge over a chilling “void” below – and a problem with the door handle means it is very easy to get trapped out there. And so the film continues, weirdly toggling between the uncanny and the sweetly sentimental – although the tougher, more wised-up sense of the city itself comes across with Daniele and Mario’s walks through the streets. It’s a baffling misfire. Scherzetto screened at the Venice film festival . Explore more on these topics Film Drama films Film adaptations Italy Venice film festival reviews Share Reuse this content Most viewed Most viewed Books Music TV & radio Art & design Film Games Classical Stage News Opinion Sport Culture Lifestyle Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning Sign up for our email About us Help Complaints & corrections Contact us Tip us off SecureDrop Privacy policy Cookie policy Tax strategy Terms & conditions All topics All writers Newsletters Digital newspaper archive Bluesky Facebook Instagram LinkedIn Threads TikTok YouTube Advertise with us Search UK jobs Tips Accessibility settings Work with us Back to top © 2026 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (dcr)
Comments
No comments yet.
Sign in to comment.