Two clues make a test: HBO Max chose to arrive in Italy by relying on important productions, with a significant theme, but with a realization and a classic system. Beautiful, well-made but far too clean and elegant compared to the offer of titles it has in the catalog, as if it was important to offer an eulcorate frame to insert themes and significant topics.
As for Portobello, it is undeniable that In Utero (from May 8 on HBO Max, in fact, with 8 bets with that beautiful custom of HBO weekly bets) is an excellent TV series (and not miniseries because the final leaves open so many doors possible), but the feeling is to have limited to raising a consolidated and asserted serial language rather than trying to propose something different.
Yes, I’m doing the most classic of the hairs in the egg, because there are platforms and productions from which you always expect that extra quality jump rather than settle down. In Utero it has all the visual cleanliness typical of Cattleya products, with warm colors like that Barcelona where the clinic for fertility of Dr. Martini interpreted by Sergio Castellitto. And if you are wondering “how do you do to make an Italian series set in Spain” the same doubt has already had the director Maria Sole Tognazzi who in the press conference explained how turning for Barcelona for the nicknames found a clinic like that of the series, managed by Italian doctors. In the end, if assisted fertilization is so stubborn and complicated, it is easier to take a flight to Spain.
In Utero it has the merit to tell in a delicate way a theme like that of assisted fertilization, without hiding what are the economic and commercial needs of a clinic, but giving humanity to those who choose this road. Using the most classic structure of the procedure, with the cases of the various patients to introduce the bets, the TV series balances the personal events of the protagonists, the horizontal plot, with the vertical one of the various patients, also being able to count on guest stars of excellent level.
Not wanting to be spared, In Utero also addresses the theme of gender transition with Angelo, interpreted by Alessio Fiorenza, biologist of the clinic. The fifth episode, dedicated to Angelo’s personal story with a trip to Sicily from his family, is at the same time the best bet from a viewpoint of acting freshness and the worst as a structure, with a strong disequilibrium regarding Angelo’s personal history. But as we do in American medical dramas, In the uterus focuses on the various personal stories also facing that crisis of the 30-year-olds in the balance between economic difficulties and desire for independence, thanks to the character of Thony.
To weigh all the TV series is however an excess of theatrical recitation, at times too emphatic, little loose, which weighs on the dialogues instead of navigating them. Sergio Castellitto and Maria Pia Calzone, in particular, seem on different temporal spaces than the other protagonists, as if they came out of two different serial forms. Overall In Utero is a good series, the direction of Maria Sole Tognazzi accompanies the scenes focusing on details, the screenplay of the episodes supports a perhaps more fragile scaffolding than it seems. Of course now, however, for HBO Max it is time to do HBO in Italy.
L’articolo In Utero on HBO Max, the review: an important theme for a great fiction from the classic setting comes from Dituttounpop.it.
