Hypersomnia – expiatory sleep in the sci

The section Out of Competition – Tales of the Turin Film Festival no. 40 began with Hypersomniaa singular science fiction film directed by Albert Mascia and starring a motivated Stephen Accorsi.

The plot transports the viewer to a very near dystopian future, where overcrowded prisons induce the government to implement an extravagant measure to contain an otherwise untenable situation.

But also giving rise to urgent ethical issues that upset the protagonist’s life.

Sleep as an economic and rational solution for expiation of the sentence

In Hypersomnia we find ourselves in Italy, in a dystopian future rather close to the current present, in which delinquency has reached unmanageable levels to the point that the overcrowded and overcrowded prisons lead the government to develop a treatment up to shortly before experimental, called Hypnos.

According to the procedure envisaged by it, prisoners sentenced to the most severe sentences are placed in a state of forced sleep: a sort of catalepsy which allows perfect management in all economy and efficiency, with a simple bureaucratic organization of the various elements subjected to that treatment .

However, the psychologist of the prison where this treatment is practiced discovers that, on the occasion of the periodic awakening foreseen for each inmate, they lose part of their memories and their return to life leads them into a state of nervous stress which makes them aggressive and altered.

A case of a patient whose personal connotations are lost will trigger an intrigue that will turn, for the doctor himself, into a first-person nightmare, catapulting himself and his beautiful wife into the center of a diabolical machination from which it will seem impossible to get out of it unscathed.

Hypersomnia – the review

Carrying out a science fiction film project in Italy today has something heroic in it that cannot be underestimated when one is faced with a fait accompli and, consequently, with the work ready to be submitted to fruition of the public.

The adventure of director Alberto Mascia, almost making his debut with this first narrative feature film entitled Ipersonnia, is worthy of every attention and the ethical-moral arguments that support the plot with a futuristic thriller background are really interesting and compelling.

We are talking about prison management in an era in which criminal activity is becoming such a widespread phenomenon as to make prisons unmanageable and the maintenance of prisoners so expensive, as to push the government to put into practice a stratagem which seems to be the panacea for every economic and social problem.

The story seems to have come out of a futuristic and ambitious project by Jeunet and Caro of the late 90s, it seems so galvanizing and stimulating.

Then, unfortunately, despite a certain fascinating setting, in the visual translation of a good futuristic context and a perfect story on paper, the film loses much of its pathos and finds itself a little too much a prisoner of its inevitably limited spending budgets.

And this despite the commitment of one Stephen Accorsi very partially, assisted for the occasion by the presence of the beautiful and rather launched Belarusian model and actress naturalized Italian Catherine Shulha.