Film: The Sicilian Girl
Year of production: 2008
Running time: 115 mins
Director: Marco Amenta
Starring: Veronica D'Agostino, Gérard Jugnot
Genre: Crime/Drama
Country: Italy/France
Language: Italian
Review by: Paul Kelly
This film was screened at the Glasgow Film Theatre’s Italian Film Festival, which was staged between 1st and 14th April 2011.
Stories involving the Mafia have long been a fascination in western cinema. From the romanticised bravado of The Godfather to the gritty realism of Goodfellas, organised crime has exercised a stranglehold on the cinema. Removing the air of mysticism and, at times, celebration that surrounds such accounts of the Mafia seems to be the one man mission of Italian film director Marco Amenta, who follows his documentaries One Girl Against The Mafia: Diary Of A Sicilian Rebel and The Ghost Of Corleone with his first feature film, The Sicilian Girl. The film dramatises the real life story of Mafia informer Rita Mancuso, and sees Amenta return to the same source material that he dealt with in One Girl Against The Mafia.
Rita Mancuso (Veronica D'Agostino) has been brought up in a comfortable lifestyle with her family in Sicily, believing that her father, Don Michele (Marcello Mazzarella) is loved and respected by his fellow townsmen because he helps them with their problems. When Don Michele is murdered following a disagreement with Don Salvo (Mario Pupella) she and her brother (Carmelo Galati) are determined to have their revenge.
Six years later, when things are finally in place to have Don Salvo murdered, a tip off sees Rita’s brother instead killed. A furious Rita then flees to Palermo to speak to an anti-mafia prosecutor (Gérard Jugnot) who sees in her meticulously kept diaries a chance to finally rid Sicily of the Mafia. But keeping his witness, and himself, safe proves a difficult task when the stakes are so high…
What is interesting about Marco Amenta’s approach to The Sicilian Girl is its opposition to Hollywood accounts of the Mafia, which, although violent, often try to display their characters as honourable, or adhering to some kind of moral code. Amenta’s Mafia seems far truer to life, portraying its members as backstabbing bullies, murderers and drug dealers. Much of the narrative seems devoted to ridding both Rita, and the audience, of any kind of misinterpretation of their activities, and this leads to a great deal of empathy with her character. Of course, much of this empathy is also drawn from the performance of Veronica D’Agostino, who manages to portray the strength and, at times, arrogance of a young woman brought up in a powerful family, as well as her vulnerability and, as the trial draws closer, deep and painful loneliness. At times her performance is overly theatrical (and very, very loud), but on the whole she deals commendably with a difficult character and some very sombre material.
Gérard Jugnot also draws plaudits as the unnamed judge who takes on the case. His relationship with Rita is given a lot of screen time and develops well over the course of the film, from cold mistrust through reluctant respect to, eventually, affection, as he emerges as a father figure to Rita, offering her a glimpse of what life could have been like if she were not born into the world of organised crime.
The film’s strongest moments are in the dramatic exchanges between its characters, with confrontations between Rita and her mother, who denounces her for betraying her family, a particular standout (aside from one particularly poor line). Amenta is adept at drawing the emotion from these encounters, and adding to the pressure that is mounting on Rita’s young shoulders, and the tension of the situation.
Where the director falters slightly is in providing the kind of action one would expect from such a well paced thriller. Aside from a midnight shoot-out in a graveyard, which is intense and frightening, there is little in the way of prolonged action sequences, which is forgivable for a film which strives to be as realistic as possible, but detracts somewhat from the severity of Rita’s situation. There is also a tendency to avoid explicate violence, which would be taken as a given in a film dealing with the Mafia. There is, of course, no need to be gratuitous in the presentation of the Mafia’s activities, but to turn the camera away in moments when people are shot, or to have the murder of Rita’s brother occur off-screen seem like strange decisions in a film which asks its viewers to come to terms with the real life activities of the Mafia. Far more effective is the slow motion sequence in which Don Michele is shot, and lies dying in his daughter’s arms. This short sequence achieves the kind of dramatic impact that is lacking elsewhere in the film.
If Amenta had allowed his film to digress into more action-packed territory, just a touch more, he could have made a memorable thriller. As it stands, he has made a powerful, emotional and hard hitting drama which faithfully accounts the story of a very brave young woman, and celebrates her legacy, rather than that of the men she helped bring to justice.
Lacking in dramatic flair in parts it may be, but The Sicilian Girl makes a powerful impression nonetheless due to the performances of its cast and the real human interest that lies at the heart of its source material. Marco Amenta is more than familiar with this material by now, and not only does it justice, but presents it superbly. PK
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