Caterina va in città

In his latest film, Paolo Virzì provides a sharp analysis of the political spectrum of Rome, that he presents in the form of a tragi-comic coming-of-age story. With great feeling for spaces (from chic palazzos to bourgeois apartments) and brimming with sharp observations about Italian customs, he has made a gripping and humane film about the secondary school pupil Caterina, through whose innocent eyes we get to know the social and political machinations of the Italian capital Rome. The enthusiastic music lover Caterina moves to the big city, with her sacrificial mother and her rather dominant, frustrated father, a teacher with literary ambitions. Her new school is inhabited by a very different kind of contemporaries from the ones she was used to: children from Rome's upper-class, one half of them left-wing and alternative, and the other half right-wing and elitist; there doesn't seem to be a middle road. In addition, they are interested in much more mature issues than Caterina was used to. The uncomplicated Caterina first makes friends with the leader of the alternatives and finds herself in a world of books, debates, herbal infusions and Michele Placido and then, when she is dragged off by the daughter of a right-wing member of Parliament, she finds herself in the world of expensive parties and football stars. In the meantime, her father sees his artistic ambitions wrecked by left-wing and right-wing circles, who turn out to be united in their disinterest in the ordinary man.