Roberta Mazzoni Movies
- 1998
Matrimony is a drama about the complexity of relationships. On Christmas Eve, perfect housewife Giulia ($Francesca Neri is worried about a family heirloom which has cracked and rushes to the junk shop to get it repaired -- little anticipating her perfect marriage is about to fall to pieces as well. While everyone in Bologna is making last minute preparations, Giulia runs into her childhood sweetheart, Fausto Paolo Sassanelli. The meeting rekindles old feelings and Giulia realizes that to create the perfect marriage which everyone adores, she has sacrificed her own personality. While waiting to meet her parents at the station, she climbs into a departing train and disappears. The family slowly disintegrates, as if she were the binding element. Cristina Comencini, the daughter of well-known Italian director Luigi Comencini, has written several scripts for her father before launching her own film career in 1988. Matrimoni is also scripted by her, and based on an idea by her and Roberta Mazzoni. It is definitely a woman's film, which tries examine complex feelings of women caught between familial responsibility and individuality. Matrimoni was screened as part of the Panorama section of the 49th International Berlin Film Festival, 1999. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Francesca Neri, Diego Abatantuono, (more)
- 1996
The complicated travails of several generations of Italian women provide the basis for this drama that is based on a novel by Susanna Tamaro. It begins with the peaceful death of Olga, the elderly family matriarch. Marta, her granddaughter returns from the US to attend the funeral and once in Olga's villa in Trieste, begins reading her grandmother's diary. Olga's story unfolds via flashback. As a young woman, Oldga had to marry Antonio a man she didn't love. Later she became passionately involved with a handsome doctor at the local spa. He impregnates her and shortly thereafter dies in a terrible car wreck. The result of their love is Illaria, who grows up to be terribly neurotic. She bears Marta and then she too dies in an automobile accident, leaving Marta to be raised by Olga. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Virna Lisi, Margherita Buy, (more)
- 1995
Edith Stein was a German-Jewish intellectual who in the late-'30s created considerable controversy and broke her mother's heart when she converted to Catholicism and then joined one of the Church's most rigorous monastic orders, the Carmelite Nuns. This European biopic tells her story, a tale that ended tragically when Stein, who finally made it through the long, painful novitiate process and found true peace, was brutally yanked from the convent by Nazi soldiers and sent to Auschweitz where she died. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Told in flashback, the film relates Francis of Assisi's evolution from rich man's son to religious humanitarian and eventually to full-fledged saint. Francesco was based on Hermann Hesse's Francis of Assisi, which director Liliana Cavani had previously filmed in 1966. The Saint and founder of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor is played by Mickey Rourke, and his inspiration, the woman who later became Saint Clare, is played by Helena Bonham Carter. Raised as the pampered son of a merchant, Francis goes off to war only to return with a profound horror for the society which generated such suffering. In one scene, as an act of renunciation, he strips himself of his fine clothing in front of his father and leaves the house naked and barefoot, joining the lepers and beggars in the poor section of town. The film follows with a series of episodes from the saint's life rather than a coherent narrative, following up until his final days when he receives the stigmata, or wounds similar to those on the body of Jesus at the crucifixion. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mickey Rourke, Helena Bonham Carter, (more)
- 1985
In 1938 Berlin, Gudrun Landgrebe, wife of Nazi functionary Kevin McNally, begins taking art lessons. She makes the acquaintance of another student, Japanese ambassador's daughter Mio Takaki. Soon afterwards, the two women begin a passionate lesbian affair. This leads to a chain reaction of disaster and tragedy, culminating with the inevitable intervention of the Gestapo. Despite the film's galloping sexual passions, The Berlin Affair is an exercise in aloofness, keeping the characters at arm's length-surprising, considering that the director was Liliana Cavani, auteur of the erotic classic The Night Porter (1974). The film was based on The Buddhist Cross, a novel by Junichiro Tanizaki. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gudrun Landgrebe, Kevin McNally, (more)
