Ivano De Matteo’s ‘La Bella Gente’, La Beautiful People, puts a spotlight on the ugliness in us all.
Privileged Alfredo and Susanna are on their way to their summer home in the Umbrian countryside and spot a young prostitute along the side of the road who is getting slapped around by her pimp. Susanna, a counselor for abused women, is determined to help Nadja, a teenager from Ukraine, and asks Alfredo to, basically, kidnap her and bring her back to the house.
Nadja is initially (understandably) freaked out, and tries to call her pimp for help, but as one does with a feral kitten found in the back yard, Alfredo and Susanna gently make her feel comfortable with them and convince her to stay. A bath, a civilized meal, and some new clothes magically and quickly transform her into a sweet and welcome house guest and the whole thing seems too good to be true.
Too bad it is.
After a couple of weeks of high-fiving each other for being awesome people and introducing her to family and friends, Susanna is confronted with the reality of their situation and takes a step back. The summer holiday dissolves into nasty remarks, angry outbursts, and suspicion.
But we’re still awesome; right?
It would be easy to watch La Bella Gente with a judgmental eye but that would be ill-advised. I saw myself in the characters, all of them, actually, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. You spend your life telling yourself that class and social status mean nothing, and here comes Ivano De Matteo to remind us that we are only fooling ourselves if that’s what we think we believe.
La Bella Gente premiered during the Venice Days portion of the 2008 Venice Film Festival but due to distribution problems that I don’t understand and clearly had De Matteo at wit’s end, wasn’t released in Italy until just last month.
The cast is exceptional, with Antonio Catania and Monica Guerritore as Alfredo and Susanna, Elio Germano as their son and Myriam Catania as his snotty girlfriend. Victoria Larchenko is amazingly natural as the damaged teenager.
Some films gets put on the shelf and nobody really misses them, but this one fought it’s way off because it deserves to be in the theater. Let’s hope it makes it to the American ones.
I Love Italian Everything 