‘Across the River and Into the Trees’ coming out in Italy on July 3rd

There is a suspended time that cinema, when it finds the right rhythm, manages to bring forth like a light mist: it is neither the time of the plot nor that of memory, but an inner fluctuation that envelops the bodies, fades their colors, and turns them into icons of something no longer possessable. Across the River and Into the Trees (Di là dal fiume e tra gli alberi), an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s last novel directed for the screen by Paula Ortiz, is a film that attempts this arduous task: transforming a twilight prose, loose in structure but feverish in emotions, into a visual score unafraid of languor or excess.

The story, for those who remember it from literature, follows an American colonel, Richard Cantwell (Liev Schreiber), physically worn down by war and life, terminally ill, who wanders through a late-twentieth-century Venice confronting his own death. But before that, and perhaps because of it, he lets himself be drawn into a final, melancholic love with a young Italian countess, Renata (Matilda De Angelis). The novel, often dismissed as minor, actually contains the code of Hemingway’s testament: the obsession with the end, fading beauty, war as an inner sculpture. It is precisely on these subtle notes that the film builds its fragile and beautiful architecture.

Schreiber lends the colonel a weary physicality, one that does not seek charisma. The actor’s gaze is not that of a hero, but of a man who has lost any need to appear a certain way. His body does not perform, but it reflects: it is a depleted surface that has absorbed too much history. The hoarse voice, the heavy step, the way he touches a glass or the edge of his jacket… everything about him suggests a subtle acquiescence to dissolution, never tragic, never sentimental.

At his side, Matilda De Angelis plays Renata as an impalpable yet nervous presence, with an intermittent grace and a tension under the skin that betrays the character’s depth. She is not merely the young and radiant lover: she is the last vision, the last desire, the last mirror in which the man can glimpse a gentler, more illusory version of himself. The dynamic between the two is not one of conventional seduction: it is a rite of passage, a secret ceremony between the one who knows and the one who still hopes.

The film is in no hurry to tell its story: each scene seems to float in dense water, and Ortiz’s direction—already known for La novia (2015), a lyrical reinterpretation of García Lorca—lingers on compositions that brush against the painterly without ever becoming postcard-like. Venice, filmed in the muted light of winter, is anything but romantic: it is a city that watches, that listens, that keeps. The canals, the narrow streets, the glass, the reflections all contribute to a sense of existential suspension. Time does not pass; it expands.

A crucial role in this suspension is played by the cinematography, which works with a reduced, refined palette: pearlescent greys, bruised greens, mottled golds. Every light seems to emerge from a De Chirico or Turner painting, yet without aestheticizing rhetoric. The beauty here is tired, like the protagonist. And it is precisely in this aesthetic exhaustion that it finds its power.

The ensemble of Italian actors is noteworthy, never reduced to a decorative function. Laura Morante, with her tragic and composed face, is a presence that seems to guard a secret. Massimo Popolizio lends his cavernous voice to a character who acts almost as the colonel’s dark double, a keeper of military memory and ethical collapse. Maurizio Lombardi is insinuating, always teetering between irony and twilight, while Sabrina Impacciatore—in one of the most restrained roles of her recent career—delivers a controlled performance, as if every word came from a wound barely stitched together.

The film’s editing progresses by layering emotional moments rather than following a traditional pace. Scenes don’t rush from one to the next; they pause, reflect, and respond to each other. The dialogue, often staying true to the novel, is made up of pauses, implications, and subtle emotional shifts. Much is left unsaid, and that restraint gives each line a sense of intimacy, more effective because of what it holds back.

Across the River and Into the Trees isn’t a film driven by plot. It is a reflection on a fading body and lingering desire. The film embraces silence, slowness, and fragmented beauty. At a time when cinema often prioritizes speed and structure, this quiet, thoughtful work allows itself to drift. Hemingway might have seen in this adaptation the same kind of fatigue that marked his late writing. And maybe, within the film’s silences and images, he would have smiled briefly with the mix of weariness and grace he carried in his final years.

The film will be released in theaters in Italy from July 3, distributed by PFA Films in collaboration with L’Altro Film.