Time Warner On Demand is offering a pretty good one right now from director Pupi Avanti, the award winning Il Papà di Giovanna (2008) , )with Alba Rohrwacher and Silvio Orlando.
Set in Mussolini era Italy, it’s the story of Michele Caseli, a high school art teacher in a loveless marriage with a socially awkward daughter ( Rohrwacher) who turns out to be criminally schizophrenic.
When the daughter, Giovanna, is disappointed in love, reality and her delusions about a classmate clash and she kills a friend that she sees as her romantic rival. Her mother, who has never really connected with her can’t seem to empathize but her father stands by her with unwavering loyalty.
The chaos of the times mirror the chaos in the family in a (not excessively, but never-the-less decidedly) sentimental and old-fashioned way; at times I could have sworn it was a movie from the fifties. One reviewer complained that “the nostalgia for the period of Il Duce is rather off-putting”, but I couldn’t disagree more. Families who find themselves on the wrong side of wars and politics have the same trials and tragedies as those who do not, and to be put off by characters who just happen to have lived with fascism is a pretty immature reaction. This was Italy’s reality during World War !! and I found it a very interesting backdrop for the story.
Silvio Orlando and Alba Rohrwacher are amazing actors and even though the ending is a little improbable and cheerful, the painful drama in the rest of the story more than makes up for it.
I Love Italian Everything 