In an effort to bring new voices to world cinema, the Venice Biennale College Cinema initiative, now in its tenth year, offers workshops and financial help to first time directors. Veteran screen and TV actor Monica Dugo, who has appeared in over thirty titles from dramas to comedies, and beloved TV series like Commisario Montalbano and Don Matteo, makes a bright feature film debut in Like Turtles (Come le tartarughe), one of the four College feature films screening at this year’s festival. Applying her experience portraying characters, she knows how to eloquently reveal their flaws and virtues.
Italy has a distinguished cadre of women filmmakers (Francesca Archibugi, Alice Rohrwacher and many more) but still suffers the same gender imbalance as the world film industry. Legendary Italian film director Lina Wertmüller (who died recently at age 93) reigned supreme from the Sixties onwards and was the first woman director nominated for an Academy Award, for Seven Beauties. Her films had a brilliant, savage edge to them, mixing personal and political storylines. Dugo’s style is more subdued and her wit is softer, but she still has a lot to say about the submissive role women play in modern-day Italy.
In this chronicle of a bourgeois family crisis, Dugo plays Tina, a conformist wife and mother who acts as general manager and secretary to her family’s needs, attending to meals and school schedules and making sure the household runs smoothly with the help of a patient Filipino housekeeper, who seems to function mainly as comic relief. When Tina, the perfect housewife, breaks down, it is not by throwing a tantrum or making a scene as many Italian comedies might suggest, but by staging an elegant, subdued withdrawal into her inner shell, adopting the hikikomori solution of total social isolation. Using the turtle metaphor in a rather literal sense, she retreats into her husband’s empty closet after he abandons her.
The family dynamics are established early on. A grumpy teenage daughter, Sveva (Romana Maggiore Vergano), evolves in a convincing arc that goes from spoilt brat to mature companion. Her little brother Paolo (Edoardo Boschetti) maintains an affectionate innocence, and his remarks add some gentle humor to the story, as does a neurotic grandmother whose intrusive phone calls punctuate family dinners. The husband (Angelo Libri), however, is superficially drawn, his role being mainly that of a catalyst for the crisis that ensues. He avoids any direct confrontation and reveals little about his motives, except for some clues that hint at cherchez la femme.
Tina’s final catharsis, an angry rant against her husband’s psychologist, vents her frustration, but also makes it seem like she’s deflecting blame for the collapse of her marriage. As she tries to process and overcome her grief, her refuge/turtle shell becomes the claustrophobic stage that other characters have to enter to interact with her and help her move beyond passive despair.
The script is well-paced and the dialogue reveals only the necessary clues. The remarks of the couple’s young son offer a wistful counterpoint to his mother’s anger, and older sister Sveva is quick to provide a reality check with her caustic comments. The location is central Rome, with its sedate sepia tones and stately church domes providing a contrast to the turmoil that reigns inside the home, where the closet becomes a bunker against inevitable change. The film music is subtle and unobtrusive and only become redundant at the end when a song entitled “I Don’t Miss You” belts out the optimistic but obvious conclusion.
Director: Monica Dugo
Screenwriters: Monica Dugo, Massimiliano Nardulli
Cast: Monica Dugo, Romana Maggiore Vergano, Edoardo Boschetti, Angelo Libri, Annalisa Insardà, Sandra Collodei
Producer: Cinzia Rutson
Cinematography: Gianni Mammalotti
Editing: Paola Traverso
Music: Pier Cortese
Production company: Do-Go & C. (Italy)
World sales: ILLMATIC Film Group
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Biennale College Cinema)
In Italian
80 minutes
