British audiences may not be overly familiar with Michela Giraud. But the comedian and presenter made her mark on film in Matteo Pilati and Alessandro Guida’s Mascarpone (2021) and its 2024 sequel, Mascarpone: The Rainbow Cake. Known for her plain-speaking approach, Giraud has now made her debut as a writer-director with Flaminia which she claims is ‘more authentic than true’, because it draws on the experience of having an older sister, Cristina, who is on the autism spectrum.
Thirty year-old Flaminia De Angelis (Michela Giraud) lives in a swish part of northern Rome with her plastic surgeon father, Guido Maria (Antonello Fassari), and his exacting second wife, Francesca (Lucrezia Lante della Rovere). She expects her daughter to look immaculate, whether she is working as a researcher at La Sapienza University or hanging with her upper-bracket friends, Vittoria (Catherine Bertoni de Laet), Costanza (Ludovica Bizzaglia), and Diletta (Francesca Valtorta).
As they come from old money, however, they regard Flaminia as an outsider. But Francesca hopes to rectify this situation by marrying her off to Alberto De Rotier (Edoardo Purgatori), the son of an eminent diplomat (Andrea Purgatori) and his judgemental wife, Jacqueline (Nina Soldano). Aware that Alberto has a drug problem and has cheated on her with each of her besties, Flaminia is convinced she can reform him, even though a dinner with his parents at a posh restaurant falls flat when Flaminia’s fibs about doing charity work are gleefully exposed by the disapproving Jacqueline.
Worse follows when Guido Maria announces that Ludovica (Rita Abela), his daughter from a previous marriage, is coming to stay with them because she has been thrown out of her care home for setting light to her mattress. As she has Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Ludovica tends to speak her mind and can be highly unpredictable, especially where Francesca’s prized Paola Paronetto’s ceramic is concerned. Embarrassed by Ludovica’s antics in an expensive clothing store, Flaminia dons a disguise to save face. But her ruse is rumbled and she is also mistaken for her half-sister when she takes her for an appointment with Dr Marini (Fabrizio Colica), who knows Ludovica from the centre.
Her mood is not improved when Alberto comes to the house unexpectedly and insists on knowing all about Ludovica. He also discovers that Flaminia once harboured hopes to be a singer named Britney Demon and enjoys teasing her. But Ludovica’s vocal talents that steal the show at a fundraiser organised by Jacqueline, as she elbows a poor little rich girl off stage to belt out a number that goes viral online.
Unsuccessful in her bid to have Ludovica re-admitted to the home (where she has a nice life with lots of friends), Flaminia agrees to let Ludovica try on her wedding dress, as she might not get another chance. She applies some make-up and tells her sister how pretty she looks before making the occasion even more special by donning a white top hat and some tails to be her groom.
Vittoria, Costanza, and Diletta treat Flaminia to a spa session to start her bachelorette day. However, Ludovica is discomfited by them flaunting their perfect bodies in their swimsuits, while she keeps her towelling robe tightly tied over her own. When they take the bride-to-be to a rooftop restaurant overlooking St Peter’s, the trio turn up their noses when Ludovica orders carbonara. However, she gets scared by a flambé flame and has a panic attack that causes her to be hospitalised.
Upset that she was not allowed to travel in the ambulance, Flaminia berates her friends for the callously catty remarks overheard in the washroom. Feeling low, Flaminia chews out the make-up artist preparing her for some photos and drives to the coast. She wades into the sea before ordering a calorie- and carb-laden dish of pasta. Back in the city, she drops in at the gym where old flame Andrea (Matteo Milani) works in order to apologise for letting snobbery get the better of her.
They kiss and she realises that she can’t go through with the wedding. Ignoring superstitions about seeing his bride in her dress, Alberto comes to give Flaminia a pep talk about doing what’s expected of them as children of privilege. But she informs her father that the wedding’s off and they drive to the home for Flaminia to apologise to Ludovica for having had her priorities wrong and she’s rewarded with a beaming smile.
Although casting strategies have become more inclusive in recent times, Giraud opted to have Rita Abela play the role of the half-sister with ASD and she couldn’t have been better. Some will argue that an actress on the spectrum could have been every bit as winning and one suspects this topic might come up at the Q&A following CinemaItaliaUK’s screening. But Abela excels from the moment she faces off her family at lunch by polishing off the pasta while they pick politely in the socially accepted manner. Abela judges mood swings to perfection, whether she’s trying on trendy fashions in the high-end store or assessing her physique in a flowery swimsuit at the exclusive spa.
Each expression of pain, consternation, love, and unadulterated glee is heartfelt and free of the phoniness that has become second nature to those living la dolce vita. As she had based Ludovica on her own sister, Giraud guided Abela through her scene-stealing performance so that she avoided caricature in achieving an authenticity that makes the emotional drama more poignant and the satire all the sharper. The depiction of the best friends as blue-blooded mean girls and the mother-in-law-to-be as a disdainful snob may not be particularly original.
But Giraud is aiming for more than ‘Crazy Rich Italians’. In this inversion of the Beauty and the Beast fable, as she shows how wealth and privilege have emasculated and isolated Alberto, who is even more trapped in class expectation than Flaminia because she’s an arricchita.
The tonal shift as Flaminia comes to see things from Ludovica’s vantage point isn’t always smooth, with the sequence involving the walk into the sea and the reunion with the jilted gym instructor feeling particularly novelettish. But the script co-written by Francesco Marioni, Greta Scicchitano, and Marco Vicari is well constructed, with the insights into status, self-awareness, and sisterhood being witty and acute. Giraud’s own performance is admirable, as she often makes the flawed Flaminia the butt of the jokes without inviting unearned pity.
Much of her direction is prosaic, but cinematographer Manfredo Archinto, production designer Maurizia Narducci, and costumier Valentina Rossi Mori all contribute to creating a milieu that’s simply begging to be shattered like a priceless ceramic.