‘Holy Boy’ Venice Review: A Haunting Fable of Pain, Healing, and Horror

Shifting from social drama to horror tale, La valle dei sorrisi is a deceptive, unsettling film tinged with mysticism. On the surface, it seems ripe for a Hollywood remake that would steer it more squarely into the genre, but that’s not quite the case. Strip away what makes it vibrate at its core, and all that remains would be an empty parade of jump scares and eerie set pieces. In Paolo Strippoli’s hands, though—at least for much of its running time—it is something far more substantial.

A couple of brief opening scenes set the stage: in the Italian town of Remis, a tragic train crash in 2009 left many dead. Fifteen years later, Sergio Rossetti (Michele Riondino), a deeply anguished man, arrives to take a temporary post as a substitute gym teacher. His first surprise is that, despite its tragic history, the town now bills itself as “The Valley of Smiles.” The second is that everyone at the school greets him as if he were a hero—beaming at him incessantly.

Sergio, it turns out, is a former judo champion with a touch of celebrity, and for the locals his presence is akin to a star coming to town. But Sergio is so consumed by bitterness that he has neither the time nor the inclination for tributes or ceremonies. His first class consists of brusquely telling the boys to play soccer, the girls to play volleyball, and everyone to leave him alone. Only one student breaks this routine: Matteo (Giulio Feltri), a seemingly fragile boy who refuses to exercise. When Sergio tries to force him, the school principal intervenes, insisting he let Matteo be.

One night, drowning his sorrows at the local bar, Sergio encounters Michela (Romana Maggiore Vergano), the young woman tending the place, who offers him a curious remedy. She leads him to a shadowy corner of town where a crowd waits to be treated by a local healer. To Sergio’s astonishment, the healer turns out to be none other than Matteo, “working” under the guidance of his father and the village priest. Matteo’s method is disarmingly simple: he embraces the sufferer, absorbing their pain and grief. Reluctantly, Sergio submits—and it works. The next morning, he remembers his trauma (the details will emerge later), but without the crushing weight of sorrow. He even smiles.

Of course, things are not so simple. That tension drives The Holy Boy, a film about both personal and collective trauma, and about the ways people and communities crave an escape from suffering—preferably a quick one. Magical cures do not exist, of course, and the pain that some shed merely continues to circulate. Matteo, angelic as he first appears, is the one who carries it. Given his social fragility (he harbors a crush on a classmate who also bullies him), it is unlikely that such accumulated anguish can simply dissipate.

Strippoli twists the narrative a few more times, gradually transforming this study of broken souls into something closer to a traditional horror story. Yet he never abandons the characters’ ambiguous complexity. There are no heroes or villains in La valle dei sorrisi, only wounded, suffering people doing whatever they can to survive their condition—even if it means harming others, or themselves.

Thanks to its emotional depth, the Italian film rarely—perhaps only toward the end—leans on fear as a cheap thrill. Every surge of tension is intertwined with a broader sense of confusion and despair. Sergio delights in rediscovering a life without pain, but soon realizes that the mechanism behind it may be profoundly wrong, especially considering what happens to Matteo. And Matteo, in turn, struggles to bear the currents of energy that course through him. His father, Michela, even the boy who bullies him—all are acting out of desperation and grief. That, ultimately, is what makes the film less a genre exercise and more a meditation on pain and guilt. Should a remake ever materialize, it would be crucial not to forget that this is the true essence of Strippoli’s enigmatic, absorbing film.