A story

A vanity project. There’s no other way to describe it; definitions are meant to help us understand one another, and here, in just two words, there’s a whole world. An actress who has moved from comic roles to ‘more serious and committed’ female characters. That’s how she’d describe herself; we liked her in Perfetti sconosciuti and, before that, in Io e la Giulia. Judging by the interviews, she now seems to have just completed a crash course in nonsense and ‘wokeness’. She extols her own skills on set: a directing style, she says, that is cheerful and democratic (one then wonders why male directors receive more funding – here’s the answer). The film features a couple who, after their daughter leaves for university, find themselves adrift – not exactly a gripping situation. Nor are the developments: they feel a void; perhaps it has always been there between them, but they didn’t realise it. Their daughter doesn’t come across as a whirlwind of joy, but this is what the director wants to convey: simple, quiet people, filmed with great sophistication in the framing of the shots. She works as a supermarket cashier. He works with his father, a building contractor. “Is this all there is?” asks Rohrwacher, who is called Erika in the film. The viewer asks the same question; the director has American minimalism in mind but feels out of her depth in the Italian provinces, where nobody ever lives far from their parents. Anna Foglietta has indulged her whim of directing with a focus on form. For her next film, if there is one, a bit of flesh and blood would be welcome.