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| Maciste (Rutger Hauer) in The Future. |
By Don Simpson
The Future (Il Futuro) had me at the opening homage to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, with a yellow Fiat taking the place of the iconic Volkswagen Beetle. As it turns out, that Fiat is the very vessel in which Bianca (Manuela Martelli) and Tomas' (Luigi Ciardo) parents die, leaving Bianca and Tomas to manage their
home in Rome.
Bianca is old enough to become Tomas' guardian and they are able to get money from their father's trust while their mother's funds are inexplicably tied up. Bianca is still forced to find a job to supplement the trust funds and Tomas willingly volunteers at the gym in exchange for being able to work out there. It is at the gym that Tomas meets two strange friends (Nicolas Vaporidis, Alessandro Giallocosta). Soon Bianca and Tomas are entwined in a risky scheme that involves a former Mr. Universe-cum-actor who goes by the name of his most famous character, Maciste (Rutger Hauer).
As Chilean director Alicia Scherson's title soon suggests, Bianca and Tomas' present is quite grim; it is only their future that holds promise. The Future exists in a surreal fugue state in which strange events are explained by the siblings' damaged psychological state after their parents' catastrophic accident. Time has become blurred and they see things much differently -- bright lights blast through their windows all night long and their parents' crushed yellow Fiat is now grey.
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