This is a very good movie, for the simple fact that it is not what you would expect. Firstly, as the photo shows above, it is not about Josephine (Lily James front and center above) as the movie posters want you to believe. Willem Dafoe only plays a character actor, who actually speaks Italian most of the film, not perfectly, as well as English to translate. It is not your typical post-WWII Italian film either, as you come to believe in the beginning and keep expecting it to be throughout. The film is about Mimosa (Rebecca Antonaci – who doesn’t even get a Wikipedia page), and even the name is rather cute and has a hidden meaning I think. Mimosa is a delicious breakfast drink of champagne and orange juice. Thus telling us that she has two sides to her. She wants to have fun but she also has very good values. Her values are the suspense of this film. You fear for her not returning home, as is promised many times throughout.
The film begins as a film within a film. It is WWII, this was expected as it somehow didn’t seem like the film would be about this. The camera finally pans back to show the audience viewing this film up on the curtained screen as we are introduced to mama and her two daughters Mimosa and Iris. Iris is immediately starstruck when she is greeted by a young man who wants her to come to casting the next morning. Mama is focused on whether this is a good idea but enticed by the thought of gaining 5,000 lira. The expectation at this point is that this is going to be about Iris becoming a famous Cinecittà idol, who is in conflict with her poverty – middle class family. Quickly though, you will realize it is Mimosa who will be chosen instead, even though she is the ugly duckling compared to her sister who is not a Lily James. Thus the film shows us “They won’t buy the cow if they can get the milk for free.”
The film is NOT a typical Italian post-WWII movie either, as you are expecting throughout the film. Also, you need subtitles for the majority of this film, as it is not in English as Kanopy would have you believe. This should be the hint, as you begin to notice the presumed major actors are only bit characters to Mimosa. I love this trick on the audience. I have not seen something happen like this before, that I can recall.
Mimosa doesn’t actually become a major Cinecittà star, but a play thing of Josephines. She does not understand this as neither speak the other’s language. This is a fun trick in the movie too, all the misunderstandings and interpretations. Josephine uses this by telling people at a party that Mimosa is a Swedish poetess named Sandy. This plays against her though much like the scene at the end of “Dangerous Liaisons” with Glen Close at the opera house. Except this isn’t the end of this movie and Josephine bounces back with a pretty good poem of her own – only no one reads it except her interpreter played by Willem Dafoe.
Another symbolic expectation is the foreshadowing of Wilma (an actress killed while making this film and spoken of early on), dying on the beach and later showing Mimosa’s clothes dropped by the lion’s cage. This is brought back full circle but in a very creative and interesting way. When Mimosa finally does get out of the house – mind you she is not held by force, merely her champagne intrigues, she ends up walking along the beach and sees the cross for Wilma. As she stands there, a laborer from the party, yells out to offer her a ride to Rome or home. Once again, you are thinking that finally, this Italian post-WWII saga will end happily ever after with Mimosa hugging and kissing her parents who have been, you would assume, beside themselves waiting for her. At this point I was really in suspense worried for this poor girl and concerned about her becoming Wilma 2. My expectations were still getting the best of me.
Instead, Mimosa goes to the actors ritzy hotel and you are caught up in “What the hell are you doing?” She had, we assume, a one night stand with the main actor of the film that was being made. She believes this and she is now chasing after him – love smitten – trauma bond created? Early on in this film, we learn that Mimosa is already squirreled up to be married to a local boy, not too attractive, though neither is she. Now, she has been to a party, had a liaison with a Hollywood actor and you realize she is probably wanting this chase, no matter how humiliating, so as to not have to marry the local boy. Naturally, Hollywood boy is smitten with Josephine, at all costs.
Mimosa finally, finally, finally, is on her journey home. You are still thinking, okay, this is where we will have that wonderful dramatic ending with mama and papa and Iris hugging and kissing the prodigal daughter who they have been frightfully worried about. But yet, there is more. The writer and director Saverio Costanzo has a little symbolic surprise in store for us. Something akin to the film “Magnolia,” by Paul Thomas Anderson. Only the frogs have become a lion. The lion was foreshadowed earlier on in the movie, as I mentioned her clothes are haphazardly ditched in front of her cage. And yet, other foreshadowing, that I didn’t pick up on, is the fascination between Mimosa and the lion. Both are female, both seem mesmerized by each other – at first glance. One is in a cage, the other a domestic cage typically created by an old fashioned family. In the end, while at first she seems frightened buy this lovely lioness, and Saverio gives us a cut for a moment to presume she has been ravaged, instead, the movie ends with the two of them walking side by side. Brilliant!
Why should we presume that she was eaten? Firstly, a Hollywood animal is a trained actor. While the lioness had a bit of a roar, who wouldn’t when you are bored stiff in a tiny cage? If she were eaten, why would the lion still be alive, walking gently beside her? The lion would have run off with its carcass, or left her to run off. No, I think this is just a Fellini type ending where we see the balance of females who are both free of their constrictions, and have found harmony amongst one another. The entire film was not what you would expect, so this draws a conclusion for me that neither is this. It is Saverio having fun, being creative and ending his film in a non-traditional way.
BTW, Rebecca is a beautiful woman and I found a very interesting little interview with her in L’Officiel. This is a very unique magazine I came upon during high school French classes; at a book store years gone by.
Jeannine Vegh 