Silvio Soldini’s Le Acrobate (The Acrobats) is a little out of my range – it’s from 1997, a few years before I started watching a lot of Italian movies. Soldini is one of my favorites, and his Bread and Tulips (Pane e Tulipani) is my absolute favorite movie of all time. I’ve seen so many of Soldini’s other movies, like Brucio nel Vento (burning in the wind), Agata e la Tempesta (Agata and the Storm), Giorni e Nuvole (Days and Clouds) and Cosavogliodipiù (Come Undone). He’s been making movies since the early 80s and has dozens of credits. I don’t know why I’ve never watched Le Acrobate – everybody said it was wonderful. I finally got around to it a few days ago and…I was disappointed.
In an interview with Soldini, one in which he talked about Bread and Tulips and I recently translated and posted, Soldini talks about why he makes so many movies about women. He said that he did it “because women don’t do it, and there’s hardly anyone to tell the truth”. I’d been happy with the way he told our stories – we women. I loved Rosalba in Bread and Tulips and Elsa (Margherita Buy) in Days and Clouds. It might seem a little presumptuous for a man to take it upon himself to explain us in film, but he actually has done a pretty good job of it.
Maybe he just hadn’t gotten enough practice at it when he tried to tell the story of the women in “Le Acrobate”. Maybe it just takes awhile to successfully speak with the voice of a gender that is not your own.
It’s not that “Le Acrobate” didn’t do well. It was nominated for David di Donatello awards and Soldini gave it credit for making Bruno Ganz want to work with him in Bread and Tulips. I wanted to like it – I really did. But I was bored, plain and simple. My mind kept wandering and I had to kind of force myself to watch the end.
Not that it’s terrible. It’s the story of a divorced woman, Elena (Licia Maglietta – Bread and Tulips) , who has a kind of empty life. She’s sleeping with a married man, works too much, and is clearly unhappy. One day she’s driving too fast in the rain and she hits an old woman with her car. The woman is not seriously hurt, but it’s just the thing that Elena needs to snap her back into consciousness. As she gradually insinuates herself into the old woman’s life, she seems to find more of a reason for her own.
Also starring is Valeria Golino (La Ragazza del Lago, Giulia Non Esce La Sera), as equally discontented Maria, and the old woman helps the younger women form an unlikely friendship.
Sounds good; right? It just isn’t that exciting – and it’s a little trite. It’s got a little too much “girl power”, if you know what I mean, with all kinds of slap you upside the head lessons about the beauty of womanhood.
I don’t blame Soldini – he got better. I probably wouldn’t be any good at all at telling men’s stories – at least ones that men would find very fair and impartial.
Director: Silvio Soldini
Writers: Laura Bosio, Doriana Leondeff
Stars: Licia Maglietta, Valeria Golino, Angela Marraffa
1993 – 127 minutes
I Love Italian Everything 