A striking debut from Italian director Carolina Cavalli about young women and loneliness. It had its premiere at the 79th Venice Film Festival.
Amanda is having an existential crisis at the age of 24, having just returned to her parents’ home after studying abroad. She has no friends and her relationship with her bohemian parents is difficult. On Saturdays she goes to the cinema alone, sometimes she visits a horse she dreams of buying, and the only person she spends time with is her former nanny.
One day her mother contrives to persuade Amanda to visit Rebecca, with whom she was friends as a child. Rebecca, a former award-winning sportswoman, is a mysterious hermit who doesn’t leave her room for months on end. Amanda perceives her as a long-lost friend and decides to become friends again.
This melodrama about growing up and the series of personal crises that Amanda goes through as she becomes independent is designed by Cavalli as a series of absurdist scenes. Amanda moves from set to set, where strange things happen that seem to be the norm only in the world of this film. In a tiny, dollhouse-like apartment she bares her soul to a stranger in a video chat, buys dozens of cans of energy drink from an unusually dressed shop assistant or sits day and night waiting for Rebecca, whose house look like a contemporary art gallery. The jerky textual and visual narrative of the film is reminiscent of personal diaries. On screen, the world of diaries Is embodied in postcard-like, symmetrical shots interspersed with radical angles like in Hong Kong thrillers. The fabric of the depiction uses warm, nostalgic, muted analogue colors.
In telling the story of this young woman, Cavalli uses the template of developing personalities that are bold and strange and whose emotional world remains a mystery. Amanda is both Sam Shakusky from Moonrise Kingdom and Oliver Tate from Submarine, but as a female character. They are odd and lonely and strive to find allies in the wider world.
The film will be shown in Italian with Russian subtitles.
Amanda
Director Carolina Cavalli
Italy, France, 2022. 93 min.
18+