Australia,
2001, 87 min
Shown in 2002
CREDITS
- dir
-
Steve Jacobs
- prod
-
Anna-Maria Monticelli
- scr
-
Anna-Maria Monticelli
- cam
-
Steve Arnold
- editor
-
Alexandre de Franceshi
- mus
-
Cezary Skubiszewski
- cast
-
Lola Marceli, Alice Ansara, Lourdes Bartolomé, Alex Dimitriades, Simon Palomare, Silvio Ofria
- source
-
Fortissimo Films Sales, Cruquiusweg 40, 1019 At Amsterdam, Netherlands. EMAIL: info@fortissimo.nl
-
COMMENTS
Skyy Prize contender.
OTHER
Steve Jacobs’ first feature film is a sometimes wildly funny, sometimes utterly sad dysfunctional-family drama. Set in the 1960s on the edge of a small Australian town in a community of Spanish and Italian immigrants (the title means “Spanish woman” in Italian), it centers on Lucía, a 14-year-old girl whose heart is broken when her beloved but feckless Italian father Ricardo leaves her Spanish mother Lola for a blonde Australian named Wendy. Lola comes up with increasingly desperate plans to deal with her stack of unpaid bills and gain revenge against Ricardo, as young Lucía tries to figure out the volatile world around her. The contrast in La Spagnola between the dusty, bleak Australian landscape and the passionate, effervescent community of Mediterranean immigrants is striking. Indeed, the film is always moving back and forth between restraint and excess, control and instability, love and betrayal. Alice Ansara’s performance as Lucía is especially impressive—a portrait of a tough young girl who already has to make her way through an unreasonable world, and who is sometimes a bit overcome by it all. As an entry in the practically venerable Australian tradition of coming-of-age films, La Spagnola is a standout.
—Jerry White
FACTOID #111
Both parents of TV star Mariska Hargitay attended the Festival, but not at the same time. Actress Jayne Mansfield attended in 1966 on a lark, and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay attended in 1989, having appeared as himself in György Szomjas’s film Mr. Universe.
