Director: Carolina Cavalli

Stars: Benedetta Porcaroli, Galatéa Bellugi, Monica Nappo, Margherita Missoni

The debut from Italian actor turned writer-director Cavalli is a stylish and occasionally droll but ultimately hollow character study. Porcaroli is the titular character, an early twentysomething recently returned to her mother’s Turin villa after a period studying in Paris. She spends her time bickering with her older sister Marina (Missoni) and joshing with her niece. The family maid Judy is her sole confidante, but Amanda’s mother (Nappo) warns Judy off talking to her daughter hoping this will force Amanda into making new friends of her own age, so Amanda mooches around at a cavernous banging techno clubs trying to woo a local drug dealer. She also decides to rekindle a friendship she had with Rebecca (Bellugi), the daughter of her mother’s best friend, who Amanda was close to when they were tots. Rebecca is now an agoraphobic misfit which makes Amanda even more determined to recruit her. Asides such as Amanda’s determination to own a horse and her attempts to amass enough shopping points for an electric fan feel more like the product of a random quirk generator than actual character development, while the mannered depiction of a moneyed milieu populated by eccentric malcontents is a little too redolent of Wes Anderson. The admittedly impressive roving camerawork and off-kilter camera angles bring to mind Greek Weird Wave as well as Paolo Sorrentino, the latter credited here.

David Willoughby

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