“Hey Joe,” the new film with James Franco shot in Naples

There are casting choices that serve to amplify the message a film wants to convey. Casting James Franco to play a World War II veteran who, in the 1970s, returns to Naples, a city he knew during peacetime in Hey Joe—where he impregnated a young woman before sailing back to the Americas—helps underline the past of a flawed man, seeking a connection to make up for his shortcomings. Claudio Giovannesi, whose previous film La paranza dei bambini Franco appreciated, and knowing of the actor’s admiration for his Silver Bear-winning screenplay in 2019, called him to take on a period film, co-written with collaborator Maurizio Braucci. An updated version of Roberto Rossellini’s *Paisà*, its title acts as a reversed homage, referring to the locals who would call any American soldier simply “Joe.” The setting shifts between post-war memories and the criminal underworld of the narrow alleys in an open-air labyrinth, where the protagonist’s return resurfaces memories as he searches through the streets for the son he has never met.

And once again, La paranza dei bambini plays a role. Supporting him is a boy raised alone by an absent parent, replaced by a criminal acting as a surrogate (the always excellent Aniello Arena). Francesco Di Napoli faces off with a star perhaps faded, no longer centered, but still relevant like James Franco to (re)build a fragile, uncertain paternal relationship, rough-edged like the cinematography of Hey Joe. A natural talent, Di Napoli’s character displays the naivety used as a shield when lacking reference points to navigate the passing years, compensating for the absence of family love torn away too early, with the deference and loyalty reserved for father-figures turned overlords—in this case, a boss of the port underworld. Now a father himself, loyal to the smuggling kingpin who raised him more as a servant than out of love for the boy or his deceased mother, Enzo, Di Napoli’s character, is another of those lost sons of cinema, bearing the weight of mistakes and frailties of a masculinity that for too long has acted with indifference. Men who know how to wage war but have no idea how to live cohesively, present, and involved in times of peace. Protagonists often oblivious to the consequences of their actions, or realizing them too late, weaving their mild selfishness into the humanity of Hey Joe, with James Franco’s Dean Barry being a character whose blurred and questionable decisions in the finale leave one pondering. 

Giovannesi, floating on streams of bygone traditions, is not indifferent to a certain truth in storytelling, crafting the narrative starting from a Neapolitan legend that, like all oral myths, evolves and enriches itself, now arriving on screen in yet another form. A tale that uses male fragility as its compass, though it does not necessarily promise to heal all its wounds. The possibility of not becoming good fathers merely because one chooses to reconnect, but rather because one finds a suitable and secure way to stay.