The opening images of “Impossible” take viewers to the Dévoluy Alpine massif, a vast and arid mountain landscape. There, Enzo Tovoli, a seventy-year-old Italian played by Fabrizio Bentivoglio, climbs toward the peaks with hiking shoes and binoculars, watching the eagles that provide his only company.
His solitude ends when he notices another man a short distance ahead, negotiating a difficult section of the same route. Before Tovoli can reach him, a piercing cry breaks the silence, followed by the sound of the man falling from the cliff.
The circumstances are immediately called into question. Was Tovoli truly a bystander? Was the fall an accident, or could it have been a killing? After calling emergency services, the Italian is arrested at his mountain hotel and brought before a judge tasked with determining what happened.
Directed by Emmanuel Finkiel, the Arte.tv television film adapts Erri De Luca’s novel of the same name, published by Gallimard in 2020. Its central conflict is the confrontation between Tovoli, suspected of having played a role in the walker’s disappearance, and a young magistrate portrayed by Swann Arlaud.
The judge believes that the man under investigation for voluntary homicide is not telling the truth. The production gives particular weight to their dialogue, making the exchange between the two men the core of the adaptation and of its uncertainty.
Sources: Le Monde Culture.