Caterina in the Big City (2003)

A coming of age story about a 15-year-old provincial girl who moves to Rome and finds her new tony private school is a microcosm of the cultural and political divisions of Italian society When her parents, Giancarlo (Sergio Castellitto) and Agata (Margherita Buy), move from a seaside town in Tuscany to an ailing aunt's apartment in the big city, Caterina (Alice Teghil) is ready for something new. Dad, a teacher in a tech school, has undisguised social ambitions and is delighted to see a list of famous last names attending Caterina's new school. Her class is split between revolutionary no-globals and rich kids who parrot their parents' conservative ideas. Both sides try to bring the new girl into their sphere of influence. She's first drawn to Margherita (Carolina Iaquaniello), a mercurial hippie princess whose mom (Galatea Ranzi) is a politically active intellectual. This first phase of Caterina's social education ends when Margherita gets her drunk and tattoos her arm. Giancarlo arrives, intending to get Margherita's mother to find a publisher for his novel, which he has given her daughter to read. Abruptly switching from fawning to outraged, he insults everyone before dragging the vomiting Caterina home. Caterina soon falls in with the flighty Daniela (Federica Sbrenna) and her circle of rich, cell phone totting mall-rats. After making her over into an urban sophisticate, they introduce her to a quiet young aristocrat with a disapproving mother and to Daniela's father, a right-wing undersecretary (Claudio Amendola) in Berlosconni’s government. As her parent’s marriage disintegrates in the face of her father’s social frustrations, Catherina finds comfort in her extended family and hope for the future in a budding romance (and perhaps the prospect of emigration someday) with a boy from Australia. The film lays bare Italy’s great political divide and absence of middle ground, a situation some US viewers may recognize uncomfortably close to home.

Excellent italian comedy, with serious undertones

This excellent Italian comedy is very similar in plot to Mean Girls (who came out on theaters in about the same time). The difference is that this is a much more politicized film. Caterina is a shy teenager from a small town in Italy, who moves to Rome with her long-suffering mother and her teacher father, when he is assigned to a new job there. In her new school, she has to choose to what clique to belong: the children of the progressive intellectuals or the children of the rich industrialists. The left or the right. What this film says is that these people are not terribly different between themselves. They both hold a degree of fame and power in Italian society, and look down upon those who don't. The outstanding performance in the movie is that of Caterina's father, the teacher Giancarlo (Sergio Castellito), a hothead angry that others have gotten all the breaks in life, who rants against the rich and privileged but who would sell his soul in a second in order to join the establishment. He is a familiar type of malcontent in real life but one who is seldom shown in the movies. There is a silly subplot of Caterina falling in love with an Australian boy, but all in all, this is one of the best Italian movies of the last years. January 31, 2007

COMING OF AGE-ITALIAN STYLE

I had read a favorable review of this movie earlier this year in the N.Y. Times and was pleasantly surprised to find it on the shelf at our public library. What a pleasant surprise.

This is a coming-of-age film about a 13 year-old girl who moves from a small and remote Italian town to the ultra-sophisticated world of Rome. Think "Mean Girls", with a touch of Amy Heckerly's "Clueless". But "Catarina" rises above the usual teen farce by integrating Catarina and her classmates into the {corrupt}adult world around them. The fine editorial review above is an excellent summary of the story and I will not try to duplicte it.

As the Times' reviewer pointed out, "Catarina" shows how we now have a global youth culture. The girls of Roma are easily recognized as variants on American teens, with their own clothes, issues, etc.

Alice Tergil is superb as the sweet, but naive, newcomer. An excellent cast all-around.

Blaine in Seattle September 9, 2006

Better than average movie

I really enjoyed this film. Caterina is a country girl who moves to Rome with her parents. Her father is a teacher who has a grandiose vision of himself as a great writer (his work reads like a cheap paperback). Her mother is kind and pretty but a bit of an airhead. Caterina is trying to fit in at school. Does she belong with the Bohemians or with the rich socialites (think teenage Paris Hilton)?

It's a charming coming of age movie. I couldn't help but think that Italy has the same social and political divide as we do in America. I found it amusing some classmates called her a "Hillbilly". Back in Detroit in the '70s I knew a Sicilian who called himself an "Italian Hillbilly". I thought it was kind of funny but I bet he was called that as a kid. I think anyone who remembers being a teen will like this flick.
August 14, 2006

A Film Filled to Overflowing with Stories and Information

'Caterina va in citta' ('Caterina in the Big City') is an Italian film that takes as its storyline the coming of age of a young teenager transported by her family from the quiet Tuscany seaside village of Montaldo Di Castro to the challenging realities of Big City Rome, but that is only the means to an end of exploring Italian politico-social life and its effects on the youth of today. It comes very close to drowning in its own excesses, but at the root of the film is a sensitive tale of a young girl's struggles with growing into an adulthood that puzzles, frightens and challenges her.

Caterina (Alice Teghil) finds her greatest moments of happiness in her home town singing mezzo soprano in the choir: simple pleasures in a simple setting surrounded by country folk content to live life day to day. Her father Giancarlo (Sergio Castellitto) is a teacher who can't hold a job, partially because he is so outspoken and partially because he is a raving truly obnoxious person. Her mother Agata (Margherita Buy) is subservient, a woman with few coping mechanisms who allows her odious husband to run an abusive household. Giancarlo's aunt is ill in Rome and with the idea of finding a job where his talents are respected, Giancarlo uproots his little family and moves to the big city. There the social castes are evident and Caterina is judged a country hick until she is befriended by first a rebel who bonds with Caterina, introduces her to tattoos and liquor, and causes a schism between her important mother (Giancarlo hoped to have is novel published by the woman), the daughter and his family. Caterina then is absorbed into the rich and spoiled rank and file of the wealthy, not fitting in until the girls do a make over. That situation is again disrupted by Giancarlo's blindly inappropriate behavior. The true Caterina is somehow lost, still dreaming of becoming a fine mezzo soprano, but tagging along with the crowd du jour. Ultimately Giancarlo's multiple and consistent failures drive him away from the family, he rides off to oblivion on his restored motorbike, and Agata and Caterina both bloom.

The noise level of this film is such that it is difficult to watch: the young girls means of communication is a mixture of screaming, loud talking, and fighting and otherwise making us uncomfortable. Yet underneath all of the political and social expose and brandishing is a truly wonderful young Caterina whose life as a soap opera is watched tenderly by an Australian boy who plays the guitar and observes her family from a window across the way from Caterina's Rome home. The moments toward the end of the film when the playback comes justifies the fuss of getting there.

This is not a film this viewer would sit through again, but reflecting on the story after all the commotion is over, hearing Mozart's 'Ave Verum Corpus' and Verdi's 'Nabucco" etc as the inspiration behind Caterina's honest dreams, makes is a more memorable experience. In Italian with English subtitles. Grady Harp, July 06
July 2, 2006

Slight

Caterina in a nutshell: a social climber husband who thinks he has the soul of a poet but really has the soul of a brutish cretin; a verbally abused wife with a friend on the side, their daughter, the new girl in the big city, courted and dropped by the cool clique; and the Australian boy in the apartment across the alley who watches that family soap opera drama while living his own. This familiar theme movie is somewhat redeemed by the acting of the spirited Caterina and her mother. Otherwise, it just barely slips into three star territory. April 23, 2006

More reviews at Amazon.com ...