Caterina in the Big City
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| Caterina va in città (Caterina in the Big City) |
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 DVD cover for the film |
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| Directed by | Paolo Virzi |
| Produced by | Ricardo Tozzi Giovanni Stabilini Marco Chimenz |
| Written by | Paolo Virzi Francesco Bruni |
| Starring | Alice Teghil Sergio Castellitto Carolina Iaquaniello Federica Sbrenna Margherita Buy Manlio Germano |
| Distributed by | Empire Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 3, 2005 |
| Running time | 106 min. |
| Language | Italian |
| IMDb profile | |
Caterina va in città (English title: Caterina in the Big City) is an Italian movie directed by Paolo Virzi and written by Virzi and Francesco Bruni.
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[edit] Plot
Caterina (Alice Teghil) is the 12-year-old only child of Giancarlo Iacovoni (Sergio Castellitto), an aspiring novelist and teacher of accounting at a country school in an area north of Rome that one character describes as "hillbilly country."
Iacovoni relocates his daughter Caterina and his timid, long-suffering wife Agata (Margherita Buy) to Rome after finally secured a long-coveted teaching position.
Once settled in the Italian capital, Caterina enrolls in a fast-track high school. Caterina immediately finds herself pulled between two competing student cliques: a leftist bohemian contingent headed by Margherita Rossi Chaillet and a right-leaning group headed by Daniela Germano.
Margherita's father is a noted intellectual and political writer. Daniela's father is a government minister who married into a wealthy family.
Margherita instantly adopts Caterina as her new best friend. The two girls attend rallies, visit graves of poets, and listen to Nick Cave records.
Caterina eventually has a disagreement with Margherita and begins to graviate toward Daniela's group. Daniela invites Caterina to join her at a wedding, where Caterina observes a group of Mafia-connected ex-fascists pay homage to Daniela's father Manlio.
Meanwhile, Caterina's father is trying to capitalize on his daughter's connections. When Caterina is friends with Margherita, Giancarlo asks his daughter to give Margherita a copy of his manuscript to pass along to her mother, a highly placed editor. Once Caterina becomes friends with Daniela, Giancarlo pays a visit to Daniela's father's office to solicit favors. Eventually her father becomes enraged on a talk show and becomes a laughing stock without control of his anger. He loses his teaching job after hitting a child who was mocking him of his behavior on the talk show. After failing to get help by the prime minister he slowly becombs more and more miserable. Caterina then finds out that Daniel and her frineds do not like her and "Tried to make her civilised." She then lashes out at Daniel and rusn away from home only then taking confort with her nieghbor, a young Australian about her age. He has been watching there family and discribes them as a soap opera and that she is his favorite character. She then return home but her family is still in misery. Her father then begins shouting in a rank about all that matters in the world is tightly nit groups. This is one of the first moment in the movie when Caterinas mother actually shows her stress and distaste when she smashed plates on the floor. Caterinas father remians in his miserible life only working on his bike until after he finishes it, he finds out that his wife wants to leave him though is unable because she does not think he could make it on his own, let alone remain sane. He then rides off on his bike and is never her of again whick "Dosent bother our family more, we like to think hes in a place thats making him happy." She reestablishes her friendship with Margherita and re-joins her group. She then is going away on holiday and the young Australian boy whome she had becombe friends with explains that he is going back to Australia because his parents are getting back together. She then tells him that if they ever meet again she would like to be his girl friend and abruptly kisses him, embarased she runs back to her mothers car wanting to speed off. The movie ends with her playing with her second cousin on the beach.
[edit] Cast
- Alice Teghil — Caterina Iacovoni
- Sergio Castellitto — Giancarlo Iacovoni
- Margherita Buy — Agata Iacovoni
- Federica Sbrenna — Daniela Germano
- Claudio Amendola — Manlio Germano
- Carolina Iaquaniello — Margherita Rossi Chaillet
- Zach Wallen — Edward
- Galatea Ranzi — Livia
[edit] Notes
- Caterina in the Big City was shown at film festivals in 2003. Its general release in the United States was in 2005 at Landmark's Sunshine Theater in Manhattan.
- The film has English subtitles.
- This is Alice Teghil's first major film.
- On the website rotten tomatoes the film has a 89% "Fresh" rating.
