YILE YARA VIANELLO IN LA BELLA ESTATE

LAURA LUCHETTI: THE BEAUTIFUL SUMMER/LA BELLA ESTATE (2023) - OPEN ROADS: NEW ITALIAN CINEMA

Learning city ways

"Elena Ferrante's Lenuccia and Lila finally make out," says an Italian Letterboxd contributor. "A gentleman three seats away from me yawned during the straight sex scene, so did I," says another. Let's start here. We are after all far from the fifties world of Cesare Pavsse, which this movie is said to be "loosely" based on. As Lorenzo Ciofani's Italian review explains, Pavese "isn't particularly present in Italian films," and this third feature by Laura Lucchetti, based on the titular story of a three-novella collection that won Pavese the Strega Prize in 1950 and "rather than an update, gives it a contemporary reading that explores the text with the ambition of going beyond."

Set in Turin in 1938, the film follows 17-year-old new-in-town dressmaker Ginia (Yile Yara Vianello) as she finds herself falling for artists’ model Amelia (Deva Cassel, daughter of Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci) and falling in with Amelia’s party-going cohort. She tries to make sense of her burgeoning attraction to Amelia, despite the disapproval of her older brother Severino (TV star Nicolas Maupas), a factory worker.

Lucchetti presents us with a somewhat meandering; episodic film in pale colors and natural light very much focused on recreating the group of people Ginia (Yile Yara Vianello) encounters through Amelia (Deva Cassel), her home life with her brother the operaio Severino (Nicolas Maupas), and her job at the downtown atelier and its severe lady in charge Signora Gemma (Anna Bellato). The various painters come and go. One of them at her choice, Guido (Alessandro Piavani), relieves Ginia of her virginity. Lucchetti adds twists not in Pavese: the sex scenes, of course, and Ginia's success and then firing by her boss.

Sometimes this seems to be about scheduling. Ginia is often late because she's hanging out with the wild artist types, or with Amelia, and she fails to deliver the wedding dress she's been honored by being assigned to do, and this is why she gets fired. But then, as Amelia's syphilis is cured, Ginia gets rehired.

Visually this film is very nice, and that includes the period look and the handsome young people; one wondered why Severino had to be so handsome. But Lucchetti is interested in the look of things, and she handles that very well. There's some doubt whether she captures a mood as well as Pavese does, or whether including some more graphic details - including hints of the presence of fascism, totally ignored by the writer as Lucchetti pointed out in the NIC Q&A - add anything to the intensity and subtlety of experience depicted here. A lot of the natural-light scenes, however realistic for a time when electricity was in short supply, appear dim on the screen: the impression left is of youth and beauty that are a bit faded and distant. But we are grateful for this sensitive and careful effort to show us an iconic Cesare Pavese novella. He is one of Italy's great ones.

The Beautiful Summer/aLa bella estate, 111 mins., debuted at Locarno Aug. 4, 2023, also showing at Chicago, Denver, Lyons. Italian theatrical release, Aug. 24. For the US, A Film Movement release. Screened for this review as part of the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series at Lincoln Center (May 30-Jun. 6, 2024). Showtimes at the Walter Reade Theater:
Friday, May 31 at 6:00pm – Q&A with Laura Luchetti
Monday, June 3 at 8:45pm

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.