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Caterina In The Big City

2003, Movie, NR, 103 mins

Caterina In The Big City: Review

CATERINA IN THE BIG CITY | CATERINA GOES TO THE CITY | CATERINA IN THE CITY | CATERINA VA IN CITTA
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Or MEAN GIRLS, Italian style. Young Caterina Iacovoni (adorable newcomer Alice Teghil) is suddenly uprooted from her quiet life in the small seaside town of Montalto di Castro and dropped, along with her scatterbrained mother, Agata (Margherita Buy), into the heart of bustling Rome when her curmudgeonly father, Giancarlo (Sergio Castellitto), is finally granted his careerlong wish of being reassigned to a teaching post in the capital. The sophisticated city kids at Caterina's new school initially laugh at her modest provinciality, and she finds it difficult to navigate the deep chasm that divides her class into two warring political factions, each led by charismatic young women. On the Left: Margherita Rossi Chaillet (Carolina Iaquaniello), daughter of a famous novelist (Galatea Ranzi) and a well-known philosopher (Flavio Bucci); she favors grungy secondhand clothes, purple hair and street protests. On the Right: snooty Daniela Germano (Federica Sbrenna), daughter of crypto-fascist government minister Manlio Germano (Claudio Amendola); Daniela leads a gaggle of squealing, fashion-conscious party girls. Caterina knows nothing about skinheads, squats, communists or neofascists and can't keep up with the political debates that erupt each day in class, but she soon charms both sides with her Candide-like optimism. She first falls in with Margherita and before long is drinking vodka, smoking cigarettes and listening to Nick Cave. But once Caterina's opportunistic father sees her new tattoo — and realizes that Margherita's mother has no intention of helping him publish the novel he's been writing — he forbids his daughter to see her new friend ever again. No problem: Caterina is promptly scooped up by Daniela and the fashionistas, who immediately take her shoplifting, give her a Paris Hilton makeover and fix her up with Daniela's aristocratic cousin, Gianfilippo (Martino Reviglio). But as happy as Caterina claims to be, she begins wondering what happened to her old self — the one who dreamed of one day becoming a concert choral singer — and worries that the new Caterina isn't really Caterina at all. Despite outward appearances, Paolo Virzi's utterly charming fable is actually a razor-sharp political satire that tries to make sense of Italy's current political situation while expressing the frustrations of ordinary citizens — people like Giancarlo — who are quite literally driven mad by a sense of powerlessness. Both the Right and Left are characterized primarily by their affectations and excesses, and in the end form an elite class that only speaks to itself. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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