Remembering Virna Lisi
Cineforum 2015, our monthly screening of Italian movies, remembers and honors the recent loss of one of the greatest Italian actresses, Virna Lisi, with a film directed by Cristina Comencini.
Centered around a family struggling to cope with itself, with much of the action taking place in the villa of of Irene ( Virna Lisi), the domineering widowed grandmother, Life is talky, overloaded with narration and mostly so overlit it’s distracting. Three grown-up siblings are messily working through life issues, with lovers, hapless husbands and children caught in the shifting currents.
In a large, semi-rural house a troubled matriarch Irene (Virna Lisi) frets about her roses and her three wayward children. The eldest, Sara (a familiarly neurotic Margherita Buy), is left alone after the death of her husband. She fills the gap by obsessing about her adolescent son – worrying that he might have had an accident, that he might be on drugs, or worse still, that he might be gay – like his uncle Claudio, her younger brother. Somehow, Claudio has never managed to tell his mother about his sexual orientation, and even though he is now a successful lawyer, the need for secrecy puts a strain on his relationship with his boyfriend. The middle child, Rita (Sandra Ceccarelli), is apparently the most settled; but her passion for vet Davide (an overdubbed Jean-Hugues Anglade) acts as a line of fracture, splitting her apart from her husband Carlo (Marco Baliani).
Director: Cristina Comencini
Italy, 2002, 102 minutes
Film in Italian with English subtitles
TRAILER (via Youtube)
DOORS OPEN AT 6:00PM AND CLOSE PROMPTLY AT 6:30PM
RSVP
Please Make a Reservation by March 4, 2015 at 2 PM
Reservations are available until we reach
capacity or by the above date/time (whichever comes
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PHOTO ID REQUIRED
LOCATION
Embassy of Italy – Auditorium
3000 Whitehaven Street NW
Washington, DC 20008
CRISTINA COMENCINI
Cristina Comencini (born 8 May 1956) is an Italian film director, screenwriter and novelist.
She is one of four daughters of Italian film director Luigi Comencini. She attended with her sisters le Lycée français Chateaubriand (Rome).
Cristina Comencini’s 2005 film The Beast in the Heart, based on her own novel La bestia nel cuore, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. (source: wikipedia)
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