The story of Piera is told from the actual moment of birth in the delivery room to the date of the film. Her mother Eugenia often seems at odds with the world, indulging in eccentric behaviour within the family and outside. Her father Lorenzo, by contrast, appears a level-headed bureaucrat with a job in the then-powerful Italian Communist Party. As his wife becomes more erratic, he loses his post and suffers a collapse that puts him in a mental hospital. Piera gives up school to work for a dressmaker and follow her dream of acting, her favourite part being the Medea of Euripides, the woman who poisoned her successor and knifed her own sons when her husband left her. Eugenia's condition deteriorates, however, and she too is confined. At the end, the unmarried star of stage and television takes her fragile mother to an empty beach for an outing together.
Parallel with the story of her abnormal family we see in sometimes very frank detail Piera's discovery of her sexuality: kissing games with local boys, her first period, a lesbian affair when she is hospitalised for asthma, and then men. There are also incestuous overtones involving both parents. For example, visiting her father in the institution, she reciprocates some sexual fondling to let him think he is still a male and not a neutered invalid. Beyond sex though, to my mind, is the closing moment when mother and daughter strip off in the surf and hug each other tight.
Visually striking, being set in the new towns with their modernistic architecture that were built in the 1930s on the drained Pontine marshes, with many shots having a painterly composition that uses shape, colour, and light to evoke moods. One example of many is a night scene when Eugenia and Piera on foot are chased and surrounded by a group of young men in cars who threaten gang rape. The main light comes from the headlamps, which become sinister emblems of violence and dominance, exuding not benign natural light but harsh artificial light. Eugenia wrong-foots the aggressors by smashing the pairs of headlamps one after another, symbolically emasculating her attackers.
Tremendous acting from the three principals, even though the two women had to be dubbed. Mastroianni is wonderful as the caring husband who gradually becomes unhinged. Huppert has the gifts to reveal the inner desperation and determination that Piera shares with her favourite dramatic rôle. And Schygulla deserved more than her Cannes award for her courageous performance as an impossible woman, appearing like a cheap tart initially but in the end a pale wraith with no make-up under cropped hair reminiscent of Joan of Arc.
Recommended to all who can appreciate a tale told from the women's point of view, where the real story is below surface actions and words in the complex web of emotions.
Parallel with the story of her abnormal family we see in sometimes very frank detail Piera's discovery of her sexuality: kissing games with local boys, her first period, a lesbian affair when she is hospitalised for asthma, and then men. There are also incestuous overtones involving both parents. For example, visiting her father in the institution, she reciprocates some sexual fondling to let him think he is still a male and not a neutered invalid. Beyond sex though, to my mind, is the closing moment when mother and daughter strip off in the surf and hug each other tight.
Visually striking, being set in the new towns with their modernistic architecture that were built in the 1930s on the drained Pontine marshes, with many shots having a painterly composition that uses shape, colour, and light to evoke moods. One example of many is a night scene when Eugenia and Piera on foot are chased and surrounded by a group of young men in cars who threaten gang rape. The main light comes from the headlamps, which become sinister emblems of violence and dominance, exuding not benign natural light but harsh artificial light. Eugenia wrong-foots the aggressors by smashing the pairs of headlamps one after another, symbolically emasculating her attackers.
Tremendous acting from the three principals, even though the two women had to be dubbed. Mastroianni is wonderful as the caring husband who gradually becomes unhinged. Huppert has the gifts to reveal the inner desperation and determination that Piera shares with her favourite dramatic rôle. And Schygulla deserved more than her Cannes award for her courageous performance as an impossible woman, appearing like a cheap tart initially but in the end a pale wraith with no make-up under cropped hair reminiscent of Joan of Arc.
Recommended to all who can appreciate a tale told from the women's point of view, where the real story is below surface actions and words in the complex web of emotions.