Of disability and nobility

When Italian director Gianni Amelio set out to cast the role of a disabled teenage boy in his haunting drama “The Keys to the House,” he knew exactly where to scout for likely candidates.

“Swimming is kind of a therapy with this kind of illness,” says the veteran director through a translator. “I knew I would find a boy like that in a swimming pool. So I went to a swimming pool near Cinecitta [studios], and on the first day, I met Andrea. It was kind of a sign of destiny.”

Andrea Rossi, who was 16 then, was competing in a race the day he caught Amelio’s eye. Rossi, who possesses a smile that doesn’t quit, has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and mental retardation. But his disabilities didn’t stop him from racing against children who had no such disabilities. “He came in first,” says Amelio, laughing. “Why did he come in first? He had challenged the ‘normal’ kids. He said to them, you can race me, but you have to swim with just one arm and a leg. That’s a formidable piece of personality. That is when I became aware that I would have to make the film from a positive point -- that he is winning against the handicap in some way.”

“The Keys to the House,” which opened Wednesday, stars Kim Rossi Stuart as Gianni, a young man who had abandoned his baby 15 years earlier when the mother died in childbirth and he learned that the child had problems.

Vivacious, inquisitive and mischievous, Paolo (Andrea Rossi) is both physically and psychologically disabled from the difficult birth and has been living with relatives.

But now Gianni wants to meet Paolo and agrees to take him to a hospital in Berlin for tests in hopes of reconciling and getting acquainted with him. At the hospital, Gianni meets Nicole (Charlotte Rampling), who has spent years taking care of her disabled daughter and helps Gianni come to terms with the grief and guilt he feels over abandoning Paolo

Amelio (“Stolen Children”) was originally approached to do a film based on the book “Born Twice,” which follows the life of a disabled boy from birth to age 32. But he told the producer, “I wouldn’t be capable of telling the same story in a film version. It needed a personal experience of my own on the subject to be able to do that. I think I would have strayed from the spirit of the book. I asked if it was possible for me to write my own story.”

He wanted to tell about an “extreme” father and son -- “the story of a father who refused his son as soon as he was born.

“On screen, we practically see this feeling of guilt on his face. This practically deformed child somehow personifies the sense of his guilt. That is why I wanted the role of the father to be played by a very handsome actor, handsome in a classical way. Because being handsome would make that fact stand out more, that his child is deformed.”

Film work as therapy

During the 10-week production of the film, Rossi underwent a metamorphosis, Amelio reports. “Andrea, like many kids with the same type of problem, is always treated from a physical point of view because adults keep thinking he is mentally unable to develop his own ideas. I had the feeling that Andrea did have some intelligence to express, and the feeling was right.”

Making the movie was mental therapy for Rossi, who turns in a performance of quiet strength, humor and nobility. “This was confirmed by Andrea’s doctors,” says Amelio. “He has a more adult attitude. He is less detached from things, and he thinks about things more. He has become more mature.”

Rossi’s father stood beside Amelio on the set every day.

“He said, ‘I want to be beside you because I want to make sure what point Andrea can reach, and the things he is unable to do,’ ” recalls Amelio. “Each day I asked Andrea to do something a bit more but always stopped when I knew Andrea couldn’t have gone beyond that part.”

Rossi’s life, says Amelio, is vastly different from Paolo’s. “He lives with a splendid family -- with a mother, father and younger sister. They have brought him up as if he was a completely healthy person.”

And he attends regular school. “In Italy, all children are required to go to normal school,” Amelio explains. “They have a special teacher that kind of follows them during the day.”

Still, he says, “there is a real problem with regard to disabled children because almost spontaneously we feel sorry for them. So we try not to ask too much of them. I demanded some kind of effort from [Rossi] and he managed to do this. My greatest joy having made the film is that he has something that has gone beyond the screen.”

Amelio didn’t spend time rehearsing Rossi and Stuart. “I think the relationship of the actor with the director is more important than the relationship between the actors among themselves. Professionally, actors are very fragile people, even at the level of jealousy. So every actor needs to have the feeling that the director is looking exclusively at him. I wanted to give this feeling to Kim and Charlotte because they are actors.”

Alla Faerovich, the severely disabled young woman who plays Rampling’s daughter Nadine, has been a friend of Amelio’s since 2001, and he elicits a touching performance from her, as well.

“She has a different syndrome than Andrea’s,” he says. “Her situation is worse, but mentally she’s completely healthy. She speaks four languages and has an important job in Berlin. She reads a lot. She loves music.”

Amelio chose to set the film’s hospital for the disabled in Berlin because he wanted the story to unfold in a city that would be strange for both father and son. “I wanted a disability for the father as well, the disability of being in a foreign city,” says the director. “For us Europeans and for some Americans, Berlin reminds us of the Holocaust -- a time when children like Andrea were eliminated.”

Rossi is now 17, and, Amelio happily reports, he does his homework. “He didn’t used to in the past. All he did before was watch TV. Sometimes he comes over to my house to study. His father told me when the film came out in Rome, a kind of miracle has occurred. Before, Andrea was a disabled child. Now he is a person.”