Emanuele Crialese’s first film in eleven years is a personal portrait of two outsiders trying to escape the confines of their environment. Clara (Penélope Cruz), an effusive but slightly manic mother raising three kids in 1970s Rome, tries to make family life a party amid a loveless marriage, while her eldest daughter, Adri, experiences gender dysphoria in an era when the term doesn’t really exist. Blending intimate scenes of family drama with surreal musical sequences, and anchored by Cruz’s multilayered performance, L’immensità is a tremendous return from a director whose work SFFILM has championed from the very beginning.