Women In Italian Film Aren’t To Be Trifled With
In Vergine Giuata (Sworn Virgin), Hana (Alba Rohrwacher) finds the strength to shed the chains that bind her in her male dominated culture, but the real hero of this film is director Laura Bispuri, who tells us the story about Albanian women who have to give up their femininity and live as men if they want any rights. And yet the beautiful thing about this talented storyteller; she does not cram it down our throats. She doesn’t preach. She doesn’t even judge.
In Scusate Se Esisto (Excuse Me For Living) Paola Cortellesi is Serena the brilliant architect, Paola plays a young woman who graduates with the highest of honors and moves to London, proving herself a success over and over. But when she’s alone in her apartment on rainy London nights she’s homesick, so she decides to move back to Italy to try to make it there.
Confronting a work culture that does not exactly champion women in the workplace, Serena defeats (with a little help from Raoul Bova) the evil boss that wants to keep the girls from succeeding.
In Salvo, blind Rita (Sara Serraiocco) offers an out of the ordinary salvation to the mafia hit man who has kidnapped her.
In Amiche Da Morire (Friends To Die For) these girlfriends are each others heroines, like it or not, but what’s a girl to do? It’s a man’s world, especially on this small island in southern Italy, and the easiest thing to do is just follow the rules. If you’re married, your husband is going to call the shots. If you are an unmarried woman living at home with your parents, your mother will be doing that. If you are the town prostitute, living with the town’s disdain puts a damper on your freedom to do as you please. It couldn’t hurt to have couple of Amiche Da Morire, friends to die for. Gilda (Claudia Gerini), Olivia (Cristiana Capotondi) , and Crocetta (Sabrina Impacciatore), are adorable and hilarious.
In Io E Te (Me and You) a heroine addict named Olivia (Tea Falco) in search of stuff to sell for drugs and ends up spending a week in a dingy basement, making a connection with her half-brother that will change his life, and maybe give him a reason to live it.
This is no “feel good” after school special. This is the seedy side of childhood. This is a worst case scenario for the disconnect between terrible parents and their neglected kids. But lucky for Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori), his sister has some advice that his psychologist, on his best day, couldn’t have offered him.
In Miele (Honey) Irene, played by Jasmine Trinca (The Son’s Room), an assisted suicide practitioner and therefore a virtual outlaw in Italy flies to Mexico to buy a drug intended for dogs and uses it to help terminally ill Italians end their lives. She does this work in which she believes completely with detached efficiency, reminding her clients that they can back out at any time, acting the silent observer when they don’t, and then moving on to the next case.
As the suicides add up, Irene is like one of those characters in movies about excorcists or heroes fighting the forces of Hell, ones who after every battle with the devil are weakened and diminished. Like them, her work is gradually sucking the life out of her.
Gianni Di Gregorio’s ‘Pranzo di Ferragosto’ (Mid-August Lunch) was not what he wanted to be doing for the August holiday, stuck in Rome with his mother and a collection of other adorable senior citizens, but these ladies give him a purpose that he’d never imagined.
And yet there’s no, “and the moral of this story is that old people are a treasure” or anything like that. Pranzo di Ferragosto is like having a really good day at one of your old relatives’ house, and realizing that it’s the little things that make life beautiful.
I Love Italian Everything 