A spoilt young Italian woman goes on an emotional journey, but forgets to pack a map, in writer-director Carolina Cavalli’s refreshingly unsentimental coming-of-age comedy Amanda. The only Italian film scheduled to premiere at both Venice and Toronto festivals this year, this quirky-cool debut feature is unashamedly slight and episodic, but just about charming and funny enough to get away with it, much like its self-absorbed heroine. Indeed, credit is due to Cavalli for making her unsympathetic main character and her inconsequential life so compelling. There are echoes of Greta Gerwig’s gauche, narcissistic screen queens here, but also of vintage Wes Anderson, particularly in the film’s bittersweet comic tone and formally strong, heavily stylised visual aesthetic. Amanda opens in Italian theatres next month, with French sales outfit Charades handing deals in other territories.
Played with an authentic aura of sulky, pampered princess by coltish young Julia Roberts-a-like Benedetta Porcaroli, the titular heroine of Amanda is a 24-year-old disaffected rich kid from a dysfunctional Italian dynasty, their money seemingly derived from a pharmacy store empire. Amanda lives an idle but dissatisfied life, friendless and aimless, defiantly anti-social but quietly desperate for affection and validation. She pretends to have a job, but never really works, filling her shapeless days by drifting between half-empty cinemas and techno rave parties, floating in the family pool, or picking fights over the dinner table with her disappointed parents and wearily dismissive older sister Viola (a fabulous study in eye-rolling scorn from Giovanna Mezzogiorno).
The closest thing to a friend in Amanda’s life is long-time family maid Marina (Margherita Maccapani Missoni), who famously rescued her from drowning as a child, an early hint of her attention-seeking drama queen tendencies. As payback for her endless patience, Amanda calls Marina a “bourgeois bitch”, the irony of her clueless class-war language heavily underscored. And yet there is warmth and humour between them, Marina the kindly surrogate mother who can sense the sadness behind Amanda’s brittle adolescent bravado.
Amanda’s potential escape route from this self-imposed purgatory comes when she grudgingly bows to pressure from her mother to reconnect with her former childhood friend Rebecca (Galatea Bellugi), an even more prickly, agoraphobic misfit than her. Rebecca is a virtual recluse, locked away in a private suite in her mother’s striking modernist villa, resisting all overtures at human contact. But Amanda persists, playing the long game, keeping her eyes on the big prize of an actual flesh-and-blood friend. Cavalli also throws in a couple of other soul-mate candidates, including a horse that Amanda secretly adopts as a four-legged confidante, and a moody quasi-boyfriend Dude (Michele Bravi), whose flirtatious ambiguity never quite settles into actual romance. Socially inept and emotionally intense, Amanda becomes a kind of stalker to all three, including the horse, with predictably disastrous consequences.
In her Venice press notes, Cavalli claims she conceived Amanda with no firm motive besides “writing a nice story” and no narrative plan except to “treat characters with respect, the same respect you have for people in general.” Her film’s rambling, looping plot and oddly low-voltage finale are not exactly strong endorsements of this freewheeling approach. Then again, they arguably serve as accurate stylistic analogues of Amanda’s nervy, solipsistic psyche. Behind its cartoonish zip and surface irony, the film does contain a kernel of raw emotional truth as a depiction of twenty-something angst and post-adolescent awkwardness, that awful limbo period when graduation to adulthood is long overdue but still feels like a crushing responsibility.
Amanda strains credibility in places. The notion that a love-starved young woman of Porcaroli’s beauty would not attract a buzzing swarm of eager suitors, particularly given the comically geeky chorus of Fellini-esque grotesques that Cavalli surrounds her with, is wryly amusing but highly implausible. But even if it rings a few false notes, this oddball growing-pains story is a generally fun ride. The script is peppered with sharp observational humour, the soundtrack a feast of retro Europop, and the visual choreography impressive, with a keen eye for vintage architecture and neon nightclub colours that seem to self-consciously invoke 1970s and 1980s cinema more than any contemporary currents. Beyond its stand-alone aesthetic merits, this confidently quirky debut should also serve as a strong career calling card for Cavalli and her excellent young female leads.
Director, screenwriter: Carolina Cavalli
Cast: Benedetta Porcaroli, Galatea Bellugi, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Michele Bravi, Monica Nappo, Margherita Maccapani Missoni
Cinematography: Lorenzo Levrini
Editing: Babak Jalali
Music: Niccolò Contessa, Roberto Gambotto Remorino, Alessandro Bonfanti, Alessandro Fusaroli
Production companies: Elsinore Film (Italy), Wildside (Italy), Tenderstories (Italy)
World sales: Charades
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Orrizonti Extra)
In Italian
94 minutes
