The actress Paola Cortellesi, popular for her comedies – there is ‘Like a Fish Out of Water’ (R. Milani, 2017) – has, however, chosen for her debut as a director a crude melodrama, with some relief of humor. A film that has been a sensation in Italy, where it has beaten international hits like ‘Barbie’ at the box office and in viewers. Cortellesi reinterprets, with an agile script, signed by Furio Andreotti and Giulia Calenda, neorealist cinema and comedy alla’italiana in a feminist key. The characters are well defined; the interpretations, tight, and the artistic direction and photography, careful.
The protagonist, unlike her best friend, who is happy in her marriage, suffers the beatings that her husband gives her in cold blood and makes her home a living hell. The tension of these moments, well reflected, transcends the screen, even if the abuse occurs off-screen or is stylized into ingenious choreography. The unexpected conclusion, served as hopeful feel-good thesis moviedoes not avoid a certain bitter aftertaste.
For those curious about the past and optimists who trust in a better future.
The best: let the lyrics of the songs act as a narrator.
Worst: the whole American soldier subplot.
Data sheet
Address: Paola Cortellesi Distribution: Paola Cortellesi, Valerio Mastandrea, Vinicio Marchioni, Romana Maggiora Vergano Country: Italy Year: 2023 Release date: 4-26-2024 Gender: Comedy, drama Script: Furio Andreotti, Giulia Calenda, Paola Cortellesi Duration: 118 min.
Synopsis: It’s spring and the whole family is in an uproar over the imminent engagement of the beloved eldest daughter, Marcella, who, for her part, only hopes to quickly marry a nice middle-class boy, Giulio, and finally get rid of that uncomfortable family.
Three decades dedicated to reporting on movies, my passion. The moving image was the last of the Fine Arts to emerge, the seventh, but it was the first that was born with the wonderful vocation of being enjoyed by the majority and equally. People like John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, François Truffaut, García Berlanga, Vittorio de Sica and Steven Spielberg, masters of the image and, above all, great storytellers, understood this and made films for everyone. I have been fortunate to be able to tell it in Fotogramas, Onda Cero and El Mundo, among other media; and in books such as ‘Hollywood Naked’ and ‘Black Chronicle of Hollywood’. Member of the Film Academy (since 2006).
