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Credits
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Summary
After a life of aimless drifting, Federica, the daughter of a wealthy Italian businessman,
finally begins to feel guilty about her extraordinary wealth. With her father dying
from a terminal illness, she struggles to find meaning in her life, with little success.
She is torn between her current fiancé Pierre and her ex-boyfriend Philippe; no
one appears to be interested in the plays she is writing; and tensions with her moody
sister and self-centred brother torment her. Confused and unable to cope with
the real world, she retreats to the world of her imagination and her memories of childhood...
Review
Having established herself as one of France’s most talented actresses, perfectly suited
to films d’auteurs of the typically French variety, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi made her directorial
debut with this poignant and witty study in filial relationships. An extraordinary
cast includes Chiara Mastroianni, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Denis Podalydès and Lambert
Wilson, with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi herself taking the principal role. The presence
of so many accomplished and charismatic actors significantly diminishes the film’s imperfections
and makes this a rather striking and sincere portrait of human experience.
By accident or design, the film has a noticeable autobiographical element to it. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi draws on her own experiences, growing up in Italy in a privileged family, before immigrating to France in the 1970s. She had hoped that her real-life sister, the renowned singer Carla Bruni, would take the role of her character’s sister in the film. When she was turned down, she instead cast another Franco-Italian star, Chiara Mastroianni. However, her mother, Marysa Borini, agreed to play the part of her on-screen mother in the film, despite having no prior experience as a film actress. Whilst the film is well-written and directed with a certain amount of imagination, flair and energy, its lack of cohesion and patchwork quilt structure are, at best distracting, at worst slightly irritating. Splitting the dialogue between French and Italian contributes to this awkward sense of fragmentation, but the biggest problem is with the use of flashbacks and fantasy sequences. These seem to be inserted into the central narrative in a purely haphazard fashion, making it difficult for the spectator to follow the drift of what is being said, and we can never be entirely sure as to what is real and what is imaginary. For example, is the sequence where the young Federica manages to get her parents and her communist kidnappers around the same dinner table a genuine recollection or a fantasy, and what bearing does this have on the present? Much of what we are shown appears to be contradictory anyway, so maybe the film’s apparent lack of coherence is, paradoxically, the thing that holds it together. In any event, whilst the film may not be entirely satisfying, there are enough positive points to suggest that Valeria Bruni Tedeschi has the potential to be an accomplished filmmaker. © James Travers 2004 Write a review for this film... |
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