‘Cambio Vita‘ starts from a minor accident along the way in order to speak gently about how the speed of city life can distance us from ourselves. It is a simple premise, close to that of a classic family comedy, but precisely this simplicity allows Ettore Zito to build a warm short film about the pace at which we live and about the things we end up forgetting when life becomes nothing more than a succession of obligations. The director follows the way in which the members of a family begin to discover, each in their own way, the charm of a slower life. Far from the pressure of the city, from competition, phones, deadlines, and compromises, their encounter with the locals takes on the value of a discreet initiation.
A modern family from Milan, caught in the reflexes of a hectic urban existence, finds itself stranded in an isolated small town from the Romagna province. What initially seems like an inconvenience gradually turns into a necessary brief suspension of the world they had left behind. At the centre of this transformation is the father, the one most attached to his professional responsibilities and to the logic of the city.
Without developing intense psychological conflicts, Ettore Zito delivers an accessible, optimistic family short film starting from the idea that sometimes we need to be stopped in our tracks in order to realize where we were actually heading. The characters are portrayed with tenderness, as recognizable figures of a world that has forgotten how to breathe. In this sense, the short film works less as a conventional drama and more as a luminous parable about the need to disconnect. There is also an evident element of affectionate presentation of a less tourist-oriented Italy and, thus, the short film seems interested in revealing the beauty of a place outside the obvious circuits. The province is filmed as an alternative to urban exhaustion, through clear, professionally composed images whose visual cleanliness suits the concept’s intentions. With an orderly and luminous aesthetic, the direction relies on the viewer’s comfort and on the discreet charm of the place. The narrative trajectory is predictable, indeed, and the opposition between Milan and the quiet province is drawn in fairly clear strokes. But this predictability doesn’t bother us, because the short film offers reassurance, belonging to a serene, well-made kind of cinema that reminds us that simple things can sometimes have a corrective force in our lives. In this way, ‘Cambio Vita’ remains an enjoyable and sincere short film about the increasingly rare luxury of “dolce far niente”.
