‘Blondi’: Peter Pan’s mother and the empty nest | Culture

Women are often burdened with the Wendy syndrome, which depicts us as obsessive controllers chasing our children to be responsible, bathe and do their homework. Continuing with the archetypes invented by JM Barrie, there is another type of mother, the one who, affected by a deep Peterpanism, prolongs her childhood and youth with her children, even reversing the roles. Blondi, the character created by actresses Dolores Fonzi and Laura Paredes —screenwriters of this charming and, in its own way, sad comedy about the love and friendship relationship between a young mother and her son—, is of the second type.

BlondiFonzi’s directorial debut, is the ode to an eccentric and atypical but perfectly recognizable family. Starting with the matriarch of the clan, that fabulous grandmother played by the great actress Rita Cortese who, of course, is the eldest Peter Pan in the kingdom. Her name is Pepa —like everyone in the house she answers to her first name— and she lives next door to her youngest daughter, nicknamed Blondi, A teenage mother, and her grandson, Mirko, a young cartoonist raised by women whose best friend is his mother. Together they go to concerts, long for the days of punk, and share dances, parties, and intimacies. Blondi, a stoner with little desire for commitment, has in her son the perfect companion, someone to always play with. But the happiness they share faces the inevitable when he begins to dream of leaving the nest.

The Argentine actress’s debut film is a melancholic family comedy far from clichés and constructed with the same naturalism as her performances. Her main character, always accompanied by the poetic curse of The Velvet Underground & Nico, dresses and behaves like a teenager while her son, who adores and admires her, is increasingly an adult. Fonzi always drops, in a simple way, revealing details of the mother-son’s life and coexistence: the ramshackle and cheerful house, his drawings everywhere and her fondness for marijuana, something that makes her speak without a filter more than once. There is no room for seriousness in Blondialthough the shadow of loneliness and a difficult past looms.

With its echoes of good comedies indies, Blondi It transmits freshness and vitality without apparent effort. Also a humanity that is transparent in a cast that moves with enviable lightness: the son played by Santiago Rovito, who, with hardly any underlining, lets slip his mixture of fear and pain for abandoning his mother and following his own path; the funny and disoriented sister played by Carla Peterson, fed up with her insufferable husband (Leonardo Sbaraglia); and, of course, Blondi-Fonzi herself, a big girl who takes care of everything and who, together with Rita Cortese forms that bohemian and playful matriarchy that faces its greatest pain, that the apple of its eye (“The alpha male of the house!”) takes flight.

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