Paolo Virzì's "Caterina in the Big City" is a lovely surprise: an insightful, charming story of a fifteen-year-old girl who moves from a small backwater Southern beach town to cosmopolitan Rome.
Alice Teghil, in her debut performance, is wonderful in the title role. Her Caterina is wide-eyed and inexperienced, but never the unknowing dewy innocent. Starting in a new school, she becomes the pawn of two opposing forces: the moody, seductive Marguerita, daughter of famous leftist writers, and the popular, blond Daniella, the offspring of a famous right wing politician. The girls vie for Caterina's affection, and swept away by both the promise of bohemian pathos and ordinary teenage hysteria, she allows herself to become a pawn.
Alice Teghil stars in "Caterina in the Big City"
Paolo Virzì captures the breathless excitement and sharp disappointments of adolescence. He also understands the burden of accepting the limitations of one's own family. The film features one of Italy's biggest stars, Sergio Castellitto, as Caterina's father Giancarlo. Bored with his uneducated wife and his stultifying job as an accounting teacher, Giancarlo foolishly hopes to rise through the ranks of Italian society through his daughter's social connections. Castellitto, guilty of horrendous overacting in this year's melodrama "Don't Move," gives an affecting performance.
Caterina's indoctrination into the cruel adolescent world of girls is similar to last year's hit film "Mean Girls." But unlike the black and white American story, where Lindsay Lohan turns into an evil plastic girl before rediscovering her true nature, Caterina never loses sight of herself. The story does not stray into outright camp or satire. Caterina stays compellingly real.
