American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden 2025 Tv Series Review Trailer
Italian actress and singer Paola Cortellesi has been breaking hearts and box office records on her home turf with this directorial debut. It’s a rich, even outrageously sentimental, working-class drama of postwar Rome, a tale of domestic abuse whose heroine ultimately escapes misogyny and cruelty through a piece of narrative sleight of hand that verges on magical neorealism, played with unabashed theatrical flair and beautifully composed in luminous monochrome. The film pays homage to the early films of De Sica and Fellini, and Cortellesi’s own performance is consciously in the spirit of such cinema divas as Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren and Giulietta Masina.
The scene is set in Rome just after the end of World War II, when American soldiers were a presence on the streets and Italian women had just gained the right to vote — though exercising it under the sinister gaze of the film’s misogynistic men is another matter. Cortellesi plays Delia, a woman who is regularly beaten by her brutal husband Ivano (Valerio Mastandrea).
He makes her a slave in the house, the slave of his curmudgeonly, bedridden father (great work by veteran comedian Giorgio Colangeli), and she does odd jobs around town, for which she has to hand over the cash at the end of each day. Her teenage daughter Marcella (Romana Maggiora Vergano), who sees her mother brutalised and humiliated, is forced to sleep in the same bedroom as her two spoiled younger brothers, and when she receives a marriage proposal from a wealthy local boy, she, like her parents, is thrilled – at first.
Delia also has admirers: a soldier is worried about her bruises and a former flame, now working as a mechanic, wonders what might have been. But aside from this, Delia has a scrap of paper that she keeps secret. Is it a love letter? Some legal document that might somehow get her out of this terrible prison? Not exactly, but Cortellesi keeps us guessing with suspense that keeps us guessing and ultimately fuses the personal and the political in a way that, while a little tricky, reaches a resonant conclusion. It's storytelling with incredible confidence and style.
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