Amanda
An entitled woman searches for friendship in Carolina Cavalli’s offbeat Italian comedy.
We have here a film with a very individual voice. It comes from the Italian actress Carolina Cavalli who now presents herself as the writer/director of this deadpan comedy, a genre not readily associated with that country. The story that it tells is firmly centred on 25-year-old Amanda (Benedetta Porcaroli), one of two daughters in a well-off family who own pharmacy businesses. She is often at odds with them and is rebellious by nature. Her older sister, Marina (Margherita Maccapani Missoni), is married but Amanda herself finds it difficult to find a boyfriend or indeed to make any friends at all unless one counts a horse to which she is drawn even though it belongs to strangers. We first see her as a child in the family swimming pool leading to an incident when she might have drowned. Exactly what happened is uncertain (the film neatly dramatises the scene while deliberately leaving it ambiguous) but, even if some childhood trauma could be involved, this introductory scene leads into a film which plays as a quirky, off-beat comedy rather than as a drama despite the fact that an underlying sadness is sometimes allowed to seep through.
Amanda is not as stylised as the films made by Sweden's Roy Andersson but Cavalli's eye takes it well away from naturalism, an approach which sometimes includes shots of characters, Amanda included, addressing each other but seeming to deliver their lines direct to camera. Beyond such techniques one finds many an absurdist touch in the way that the storyline develops as Amanda seeks to create two friendships. One of these is with a youth (Michele Braui) whom she encounters at a warehouse rave and then pursues regardless of initially taking him for a drug dealer. The other involves Amanda determinedly seeking to renew a bond with Rebecca (Galatéa Bellugi), who had been her playmate years before. When Rebecca’s mother (Monica Nappo) proposes it, she is initially reluctant to comply but she changes her mind and goes all out on discovering that Rebecca has become a recluse, someone who appears to have agoraphobia and never leaves her room. This is both a challenge and a chance to win over somebody as much of an outsider as Amanda herself.
With a running length of little more than ninety minutes and with its able cast (Porcaroli is a very persuasive presence in the titular role), Amanda is a watchable oddity. For all the stress on humour, the story told becomes one in which Amanda will feel bereft and unable to fit in with anybody at all if both of her pursuits should end in failure. Indeed, the film’s blend of idiosyncratic comedy and underlying pathos puts one in mind of the work of the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki. However, that comparison reminds one that at his best Kaurismäki made that mixture both more comic and more poignant than happens here. Cavalli’s film, individual though it is, seemed to me to fall short in that important respect. However, comedy (and not least this kind of comedy) is always very much a matter of personal taste and just how worthwhile viewers find Amanda will depend on that.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Benedetta Porcaroli, Galatéa Bellugi, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Michele Braui, Monica Nappo, Margherita Maccapani Missoni, Ana Cecilia Ponce, Amelia Elisabetta Biuso, Giorgia Favoti, Matilde Rabottini, Fabian Gilbertoni.
Dir Carolina Cavalli, Pro Antonio Celsi, Lorenzo Gangarossa, Mario Gianani, Annamaria Morelli, Malcolm Pagan and Moreno Zani, Screenplay Carolina Cavalli, Ph Lorenzo Levrini, Pro Des Martino Bonanomi, Ed Babak Jalali, Music Niccolò Contessa, Costumes Francesca Cibischino.
Elsinore Film/Wildside/I Wonder Pictures/Charades/Tenderstories-Curzon.
94 mins. Italy/France. 2022. UK Rel: 2 June 2013. Cert. 15.
