‘Amanda’: Venice Review

Dir/scr: Carolina Cavalli. Italy. 93 mins.

Amanda has no friends. She is barely tolerated by her affluent Turin-based family. And it’s no small wonder, for Amanda is needy, self-absorbed and wears her grudges as proudly as she does her unwieldy black boots and her oddly granny-ish crocheted waistcoat. She is, in short, a gigantic pain in the ass, the kind of socially maladroit, privileged weirdo who crops up in the films of Noah Baumbach and Wes Anderson. But out of this rather unpromising character, writer-director Carolina Cavalli (with the considerable contribution of Benedetta Porcaroli in the title role) crafts a refreshingly unconventional and acidic deadpan comic portrait of an offbeat female friendship. 

Will likely appeal to fans of the absurd-adjacent oddness of the Greek Weird Wave

This quirky, abrasive character study, which screens in Venice’s Orizzonti Extra, is an eye-catching first feature for Cavalli, who cut her teeth as a staff writer on the Italian television series Zero. The film will be released in Italy by I Wonder Pictures, and Amanda is distinctive enough to attract interest on the festival circuit, where it will likely appeal to fans of the absurd-adjacent oddness of the Greek Weird Wave. Further theatrical deals are not out of the question, however what makes Amanda interesting and unusual as a character – she is unrepentantly and relentlessly annoying – might present a marketing challenge along the line.

The film opens with a brief glimpse of a formative moment in Amanda’s early life. Sporting flowery water-wings, she floats on an airbed in the centre of the pool of her family’s imposing villa. Her older sister Marina reclines and reads, oblivious to her sibling, and seemingly deaf to the loud splash which announces the fact that Amanda has toppled from her inflatable and is face down in the water. It’s left to the family’s maid, Judy, to rush to the child’s rescue.

The significance of this scene only becomes clear later on. Achingly lonely and angry at the perceived injustices which have robbed her of connections with the wider world, Amanda fixates on the past. She rants to the weary Marina (Margherita Maccapani Missoni) about a boyfriend who might have been – a fleeting connection with a fellow cinema audience member a full five years previously. And she leans on the middle-aged Judy for a social life until Amanda’s mother intervenes. “Your mother asked me not to hang out with you any more. Or you’ll never make any friends,” Judy gently explains. Amanda doesn’t take this well. But then she learns that, as a toddler, she did in fact have a friend. Rebecca (Galatea Bellugi) is the daughter of her mother’s best friend. And as two-year-olds, she and Amanda were inseparable. Amanda sets out to rekindle the friendship, a quest which is only slightly hampered by the fact that Rebecca is now a sullen shut-in who refuses to leave her bedroom. 

It becomes clear that, in the world that Amanda inhabits, she is by no means the only oddball in town. This can lead to a slightly mannered style of screenwriting, a sense that scenes are included solely to showcase the eccentricity of the characters. But, largely thanks to the gradual mellowing of Porcaroli’s scaldingly intense performance, we warm to Amanda. And while you almost certainly wouldn’t want her as an acquaintance in real life, the film generates an investment with and empathy for her need for human connection.