A Girl in Australia

A Girl in Australia (Italian: Bello onesto emigrato Australia sposerebbe compaesana illibata [handsome honest emigrant in Australia would marry chaste fellow-countrywoman]) is a 1971 Italian comedy film directed by Luigi Zampa, with stars Alberto Sordi and Claudia Cardinale.^[1][2]

Plot

As Italy descended into poverty and social unrest in the aftermath of World War II, the promise of good-paying jobs lured many thousands of young men to faraway Australia. In 1971, after living about twenty-five years Down Under, one of those emigrants, middle-aged Amedeo, a lineman in the remote New South Wales settlement bearing the (fictional) name of Bun Bun Ga, several kilometers from the outback city of Broken Hill, is about to meet Carmela, his prospective bride from Rome, with whom he has been corresponding. Each of them, however, misrepresented facts to the other — Carmela, a very attractive woman in her early thirties, is a semiliterate prostitute seeking an opportunity to get away from her brutal pimp, with the letters ghostwritten by her friend Rosalba, while Amedeo, feeling inadequate about his ordinary appearance, sent Carmela a photograph, taken about twenty years earlier, of himself between Bampo and Giuseppe, two Italian immigrant friends. The arrow in the photo, however, is over Giuseppe because, when Amedeo visited the tall, handsome, muscular Giuseppe for advice, Giuseppe erased the arrow over Amedeo's head and penciled it over his own head.

Amedeo drives nearly 1600 kilometers to Brisbane Airport, where Carmela's flight, filled with other Italian (as well as those from neighboring Yugoslavia) mail-order brides will land. Sitting at the airport lounge with numerous Italian men awaiting their future wives, they pass around the outdated photographs that the women had sent to their prospective mates and speculate whether their appearances had changed. Still uncertain whether Carmela really looks like her old photo, he examines and questions some of the newly-arrived women and then is hit with realization as she slowly comes into view on the down escalator. Becoming disconcerted by her beauty, he retreats to the airport's bar where, sharing a drink with a balding Italian who sent a photo of himself with a full head of hair, he expresses his own self-doubts. Thinking that she will reject him, he returns to the main lounge, introduces himself as Giuseppe and hands her a note, purportedly written by Amedeo, explaining that he is ill with the flu and requests that Giuseppe, a trustworthy friend, provide an escort to her new home.

Planning to reveal the truth at a later opportunity, Amedeo explains that the return to Broken Hill would take three days, but as the drive starts, they are no longer in the vicinity of Brisbane, but thousands of kilometers off-course in the city of Cairns, a gateway to the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland's tropical far north. The brightly-colored lush greenery provides a picturesque background for an eventful multi-day journey across eastern Australia, with one of the stops near the Reef at Dunk Island^[3] occasioning the rental of a rowboat and, as Amedeo rows, Carmela strips to her underwear and dives into the warm water, revealing her skill as an expert swimmer, as she speedily maneuvers amidst brilliantly-colored fish and corals, while Amedeo waits for her in the boat, peering downward with concern. As the long trip to Broken Hill continues, they become better acquainted and she learns of his hardships as an immigrant and also inadvertently finds out that, due to a years-earlier bout of malaria, he is subject to occasional epileptic-like convulsions which leave him unable to function for a few hours. One of the stops along the way includes a visit to a nursing home where Bampo is a long-term patient, having become unresponsive as a result of malarial damage to his brain and nervous system.

As Amedeo's small auto, unable to withstand the long journey, breaks down, they try to sell it and run into some hostile Italians who force Carmela into their car and drive away with her while Amedeo hangs on to their door handle as the car runs off the road and flips on its side. Shaken but unhurt, they board a train, but when he has another malarial attack and she hurries off the train to get help, it pulls out of the station, leaving her behind. Seeing no other recourse, she decides to briefly take up her former profession in order to earn enough for continuing the journey. Now on her own, she takes the next train and, as it stops at the small town of Menindee, she sees Amedeo waiting at the station, Reunited, they continue to Broken Hill, which is a little over a hundred kilometers further. Upon arrival, Carmela meets Giuseppe, whom Amedeo, still pretending to be Giuseppe, introduces as her betrothed, Amedeo. After a few pleasantries, Giuseppe who, as it turns out, is himself a pimp, escorts Carmela to the back entrance of what at first appears to be her new apartment, but is quickly revealed as a prostitute's walk-up house situated in the city's red light district amidst numerous other such dwellings, each with its own resident "working girl" sitting on the porch. Amedeo, who has followed them, approaches her, hoping to offer an explanation, but she attacks him with a switchblade, inflicting a stab wound in his shoulder. Eventually, Carmela and Amedeo, with his arm in a sling, are on a train, as he is still trying to convince her of his honorable intentions by offering to pay for her trip back to Italy, while she begins to cry that she was a prostitute there and, upon returning, would be beaten by her pimp. As the train stops, she sees from the window the remoteness of the outback or "desert", as she calls it, refuses to disembark at the Bun Bun Ga request stop, and has to be pulled off the train, while the welcoming committee of local English-speaking residents, hold a "WELCOME CARMELA" sign, with one of them extolling the greatness of Italy which produced Julius Caesar, Michelangelo, Galileo, Guglielmo Marconi, Caruso, Bartali and Pope Giovanni, as Amedeo translates for Carmela. Through the window of the train, as it leaves the station, Amedeo can be seen carrying Carmela bride-style into his/their house.

Cast

Awards

• Claudia Cardinale won as 1972 "Best Actress" at Italy's Oscars, the David di Donatello Awards.

References

External links

• A Girl in Australia at the Internet Movie Database
• Bello Onesto Emigrato Australia Sposerebbe Compaesana Illibata at AllRovi