Dir: Ferzan Özpetek, Italy, 2024, 135 mins, Italian with subtitles
Cast: Luisa Ranieri, Jasmine Trinca
Review by Carol Allen
He has this idea for a film featuring them all – a film which recalls his own days as a young assistant director in the seventies being sent to costume tailor shops in Rome to sort out the frocks on the film. And as the lunch goes on, we go into the film within a film which Ferzan sees in his creative mind’s eye.
The first character to make an impression on us is Alberta the boss (Luisa Ranieri), a good businesswoman and a bit of a martinet, determined to make her tailor shop the number one in Rome for the film business. It’s only as the film progresses that she becomes more interesting, when we see another, softer side to her. Partner in the business is Alberta’s sister Gabriella, (Jasmine Trinca), who is devastated by the death of her daughter and is also more sympathetic than her sister is to the problems of the other women working there.
They include a struggling single mum who brings her little boy to work with her, a woman with a bullying husband who threatens to drown her and the film’s costume designer who once won an Oscar but is still full of self doubt. The male roles in the film however are very much supporting ones. The focus is on the women.
The film is a bit overlong and it takes it’s time getting down to business and for us to sort out who is who but once it does, it holds the attention. Plus it looks beautiful and most of all it makes a really good change having a film which reverses the traditional norm with the focus on the female characters and the men in supporting roles. Which is the reason presumably why director Özpetek made the film in the first place.
Among the men however Vinicio Marchioni as the bullying husband is very scary and Stefano Accorsi as the film within a film’s fusspot director is amusing.
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