Movie

The Den

Name: The Den
Released: 2022

2022 • Unknown

Woke Score

out of 10

Plot

In the summer of his nineteenth year, Giulio has decided not to go away: he will spend his vacation at home, helping his parents with their work in the vegetable garden. In the house next door, empty for some time, arrives Lia, a twenty-year-old girl. Giulio would like to get to know her, but she is sullen and introverted. One day Giulio is swimming in the lake and Lia plays at drowning him. Giulio is a regular guy, sensitive and polite to a fault. Attracted to her, he starts thinking about her day and night. Lia initiates him into strange and increasingly dangerous "games." The girl won't talk about herself though. She has told him she came alone to spend her vacation in the old family home, where she hadn't been since she was a child. But Lia has secrets to keep and won't let anyone set foot in the old and abandoned house.

Overall Series Review

The Den (La tana) is an intense and intimate Italian drama set during a summer in the countryside. The film focuses on the relationship between 19-year-old Giulio, a sensitive and polite farm boy, and 20-year-old Lia, an introverted and emotionally troubled girl staying in a nearby abandoned family home. Lia initiates a series of strange and increasingly dangerous 'games' with Giulio, which acts as a veil for a much deeper crisis. The core of the narrative is Lia's struggle to cope with her mother's severe cognitive decline and the emotional and ethical territory of assisted dying. The movie is driven by atmospheric tension and the exploration of the fragile boundaries between love, violence, and death. Its themes are highly personal and existential, dealing with grief, pain, and ethical taboos, rather than broad cultural or political commentary.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics2/10

The plot focuses entirely on the personal drama of two young, ethnically Italian characters and a family crisis. No evidence exists of a narrative based on race, immutable characteristics, or intersectional hierarchy. The casting is authentic to the rural Italian setting.

Oikophobia2/10

The film is set in the quiet, peaceful Italian countryside where the male protagonist’s parents live an 'authentic life' off the land. The family home is portrayed as a place of refuge or memory, not a symbol of corrupt Western civilization. The conflict is personal and ethical, not civilizational.

Feminism4/10

The female lead, Lia, is the dominant, aggressive, and psychologically complex initiator of the strange games, while the male lead, Giulio, is portrayed as sensitive, polite, and passive to a fault. This dynamic inverts traditional gender roles by showing the female character as controlling and the male as submissive. The central theme of motherhood is treated as a source of intense grief and ethical struggle (caregiving/assisted dying), not a critique of the institution of motherhood or a "Girl Boss" career message.

LGBTQ+1/10

The core relationship driving the plot is a heterosexual pairing between Giulio and Lia. There is no evidence in the plot details or reviews that the narrative centers on alternative sexualities, deconstructs the nuclear family, or includes lecturing on gender ideology.

Anti-Theism7/10

The movie’s central, driving conflict is Lia’s struggle with the issue of assisted dying for her mother, explicitly challenging the 'taboo' surrounding the practice. Framing a profound ethical issue like euthanasia as a subjective 'free zone' for exploration positions the narrative against the transcendent moral law and objective truth tenets typically found in traditional religion concerning the sanctity of life.