I saved my favorite for last – Pane e Tulipani (Bread and Tulips). This isn’t just my favorite Italian movie; it’s my favorite movie in any language, and I’ve probably watched it 50 times, laughing at the same parts and the same jokes every time I see it. I’m a huge nerd – I have many of the lines memorized and I use parts of the soundtrack for my phone’s ringtones It’s the movie I’ve chosen for our first Italian movie club discussion, so I hope you are all planning to watch it.
I ask myself why this story of the mother and wife that runs away to Venice is the one that I find so endearing and I have a few answers to that question. 1 ) The characters are surprisingly well-developed for a comedy. In the first scenes, director Silvio Soldini shows us, very quickly, what Rosalba’s life is life with her boorish husband, the kids who she’s growing apart from, and the marginalized existence that she’s been relegated to. As other characters are added, they are quirky, but not quirky for quirky’s sake. They are the real, unromanticized people that a real Rosalba might actually have met on her adventure; a neighbor that becomes a best girlfriend, the guy who owns the restaurant that she goes to, and an elderly employer.
2) Everything just looks right. The props and wardrobe departments deserves awards for this movie – the rooms look like they’ve been furnished from things from real cut-rate furniture stores and flea markets and the chachkas look like they’ve always been in them. Rosalba’s clothes are the things that you’d find at those outdoor markets in Italy, cute, but cheap. And all of this is consistent with the characters and their lives.
FInally, 3) there’s a deeper, more important truth here, and Soldini tells it in a subtle, funny way. If Oprah had really been on her game, she would have featured this movie when she was talking about “finding your authentic self”, because to me, that’s what I find so compelling. One of the taglines says. “Imagine your life – now go live it”, and that’s what Rosalba does. I guess that’s what I love the most – the movie reminds me that most of the things that keep us from living the life that we want to live are things that can be changed, things that shouldn’t hold us back.
The ensemble cast of Licia Maglietta, Bruno Ganz, Giuseppe Battiston, and Marina Massironi as Rosalba, her restaurateur neighbor Fernando, the plumber/amateur detective sent to drag her home,Tino, and her new age massage therapist girlfriend, Grazia, is just perfect, and the rest of the cast members are all wonderful additions to the story.
Read what I’ve already written about it HERE, HERE, and HERE.
Enjoy the trailer! By the way, that’s Silvio Soldini in the still shot below beside Rosalba.
I Love Italian Everything 