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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
"Bread and Tulips", which cleaned up at the 2000 awards ceremony in Italian cinema, is a small but delightfully
charming fable about a neglected Italian housewife who gets her chance to live life, and, surprisingly enough, goes for it.
The story is not at all realistic, but the movie is filmed in such a heartfelt manner that you would have to be emotionally
dead not to cheer on this downtrodden lady who resurrects herself through pluck and luck to find the life that she really
deserves.
"Bread and Tulips" is a delightful little film that will bring joy to your life in watching it as much as Rosealba
(Licia Maglietta) finds the same much-deserved joy after her forlorn existence of living her life for others.
This is what the best small movies are all about, of course, which is to introduce us to a slice of life that is both
colorful and interesting, as well as being fresh and challenging. Needless to say, other than the one-dimensional portrayals
of the Barletta males, all the other performances in this movie are exceptional.
The movie is not perfect, however, as there are numerous continuity breaks between the scenes almost as if the director
was cueing in a future television station for where to put the commercials. These breaks lend a jarring note to the filming.
Furthermore, Rosealba has several guilt-driven dream sequences that are not well thought out and detract from the flow
of the story. These scenes along with a few other scenes all add about twenty minutes to this film, which pushes two hours
in length. They easily could have been deleted for a tighter, more cohesive story.
Other than that, this movie is wonderful! Don't miss this little gem of a movie!
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
Rosealba Barletta (Licia Maglietta) plays the housewife at that uncertain age after the beauty of youth has faded somewhat
but the glow of womanhood still lives on in the fullness of her feminine middle age. Not that she is aware of this, of course,
because the movie makes painfully clear that neither her husband, Mimmo Barletta (Antonio Catania) nor her two young sons
care a fig about her as a person. They feel that she exists only to serve their needs. These three males, especially her husband
Mimmo, live in the full blossoming of the worst of Italian male chauvinist piggery.
This movie will live or die on how well and how sympathetically Licia Maglietta plays this role, and I can assure you
that she plays this role note perfect, so much so that you come to love her, or at least admire her more than a little, for
the ineffably sweet person that she is. Rosealba is a little overweight and a person of some clumsiness, especially after
she is seen mistakenly dropping one thing after another into a filthy public toilet.
She appears in all ways to be a common, ordinary person, especially with her frumpy manner of dress, no doubt mostly due
to a lack of loving attention from her husband. Her life is one of suffering in silence from the pressure that her volatile,
temperamental, and incessantly demanding husband creates for her. The problems of being a housewife and a mother to three
needy males certainly seems to have worn her down to the point where every moment is harried and she never seems to have any
time to be able to relax.
She doesn't even get to relax on the vacation motor bus trip that the family is taking through the Greek and Roman antiquities
of Italy with a jingoistic tour guide who claims that all the greatness from the Roman Empire of two Millennia before flows
through to the Italians of the present day. There is some humor in this claim to us non-Italians as we all can observe that
they can't even run their own country, much less this far flung Empire of ages past. The parallels of the tour guide's claims
of Italian superiority and Mimmo's antiquated treatment of his wife are at once obvious.
She is fishing in that aforementioned public toilet for her earring at a rest stop on this tour, and the tour bus leaves
without any of her family noticing that she is not on board with them. When she calls Mimmo on his cell phone his first reaction
is not one of concern for her welfare but of anger for inconveniencing them and he lashes out at her for being a stupid, inconsiderate
dolt. He then tells her that the three of them will continue on by themselves and that she is to return home.
So poor Rosealba is forced to hitchhike (that's right, HITCHHIKE!) by herself back to her home in Northern Italy where
she is expected to wait at home for their return. One of the drivers who picks her up happens to be going to Venice and all
of a sudden it strikes Rosealba that her going there would be a great idea since she has never been to Venice. And, after
all, she does have a day or two to spare before they get home, doesn't she?
She finds a cheap hostel on the verge of closing down to bed down for the first night and a local bistro where a dinner
of cold cuts is recommended to her by a sympathetic waiter as the chef is home sick for that night. The next evening Rosealba
is without a place to stay as the hostel has, in fact, shut its doors, and she asks the waiter for help.
This sad-eyed man, Fernando Girasili (Bruno Ganz), also happens to manage a small apartment building. As it is the height
of the tourist season and nothing could possibly be found with what she has left of her funds, he offers her his living room
couch as a place to sleep. The next morning he has thoughtfully prepared a breakfast for her along with a kindly note wishing
her to have a nice day.
Walking through a Venetian square she sees an ad requesting help at a local florist shop and the thought suddenly strikes
her to apply for this position as her father had been a gardener and she knows a lot about plants and flowers. The owner,
an aging anarchist named Fermo (Felice Andreasi), ends up hiring her after she has explained away his initial suspicions concerning
her family background.
Back at the apartment building Fernando rents a back room to her, which she proceeds to clean up and redecorate. Rosealba
also strikes up a friendship with another tenant named Grazia (Marina Massironi), a new age girl who gives massages and holistic
therapy to her clients in her apartment.
Through all of this we are watching Rosealba blossom because, for the first time, she is doing things, making things,
and living for herself for a change. She even finds an old accordion in Fernando's closet and we find out that she had taken
some lessons in playing this instrument when she was a young girl. She is actually quite good with the few tunes that she
remembers from her youth.
Her stay in Venice stretches out far longer than the few days originally planned and she writes Mimmo to let him know
that she is taking a "vacation" for herself this time. As time drags on, however, this excuse is less and less satisfactory
for him as their house becomes a disorganized mess and his mistress, in a very humorous cameo, complains to him that she is
not in the wife business and won't do any of his shirts for him.
Finally, when nothing seems to be able to be resolved in this matter, Mimmo, as the owner of a bathroom fixture company,
browbeats a new plumber hire, Constantino (Giuseppe Battiston), to play the detective role and go to Venice to ferret out
the whereabouts of his wife. All of this plays out in a very humorous manner as Constantino ends up putting posters all over
Venice, thus making Rosealba feel like a wanted criminal on the lam.
Rosealba's relationships in Venice with Fermo, Fernando, and Grazia are all beautifully played out, and credit for this
must be given to the writers, Doriani Leondeff and Silvio Soldini, the latter also directing this film. I am sure that Ms.
Leondeff deserves a great deal of credit in getting just the right flavor out of Rosealba's personality as she comes out of
her cocoon and blossoms into a butterfly in Venice with the help and support and love of her new friends.
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