The Return (15) Film Review

Uberto Pasolini’s The Return strips the myth of Odysseus bare — no gods, no monsters, just the lingering wounds of war and time.

This spiritual sequel to Homer’s Odyssey finds its hero not in triumph, but in quiet collapse. It’s a slow, meditative piece that favours emotion over epic, silence over spectacle — and it’s all the more powerful for it.

After years away, Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) returns not to celebration, but to a home soaked in suspicion and distance. His wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche) is hardened by survival. His son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer), practically a stranger, wrestles with identity and loss. And Odysseus himself — broken, ghostlike — is a man searching for relevance in a world that’s moved on.

Pasolini directs with the kind of restraint that demands your full attention. Dialogue is spare but weighted with memory. Every look, pause, and breath carries meaning. The cinematography — sun-bleached, dust-hued — evokes Italian neorealism, placing us in a world where myth feels utterly human.

The performances are first-rate. Fiennes is staggering — all world-weariness and quiet ache. He plays Odysseus like a man who’s fought everything and still doesn’t know how to come home. Binoche’s Penelope is magnetic: resilient, tender, but fierce. And Plummer holds his own as Telemachus, shouldering inherited trauma with sensitivity and strength.

The Return is not an easy film — it’s a slow burn that asks you to lean in and feel the silences. But if you do, there’s reward in its emotional honesty. Pasolini reshapes a towering myth into something achingly intimate. This is no tale of heroism — it’s about disconnection, legacy, and the painful, patient act of rebuilding trust.

In a world obsessed with noise, The Return whispers — and the echo stays with you.