Aman­da

Cin­e­mas are full of lone­ly peo­ple. They occu­py both seats and screens – the sto­ries we return to often focus on the daunt­ing quest to find some­one as strange as you with whom to share the pecu­liar inner work­ings of your mind. This mis­sion to find a friend is the sub­ject of Car­oli­na Cavalli’s Aman­da, as the epony­mous pro­tag­o­nist deter­mines to revive a child­hood friend­ship with a girl named Rebec­ca who hasn’t left her bed­room for years, so she has some­one to go to the cin­e­ma with.

Aman­da is intro­duced at a point where every­one has had enough of her shit. Her lan­guid iso­la­tion is framed by lux­u­ry, and her redeem­ing fea­tures dwin­dle the longer she floats on her lilo of arrest­ed devel­op­ment atop her pool of angst. Twen­ty-five years old and with­out a friend in the world, Aman­da stomps around her family’s vil­la in her mag­nif­i­cent culottes, look­ing busy. Benedet­ta Por­caroli (of 2018’s highs-school dra­ma series Baby) embod­ies Amanda’s fre­net­ic obtuse­ness, assist­ed by the excel­lent choic­es of cos­tume design­er Francesca Cibischino.

The lack of out­fit changes adds car­toon­ish com­e­dy, as Aman­da leaps past door­ways in her both­er-boots, deter­mined to avoid vis­i­tors. The set­ting is inter­est­ing­ly affirm­ing of her social ret­i­cence – the fam­i­ly home, down a pine-lined track, is fad­ed-grand but not unwel­com­ing, while the rest of the city is stand­off­ish­ly dilap­i­dat­ed. Why would she or Rebec­ca ven­ture there?

Jaun­ty sur­re­al­i­ty effec­tive­ly con­veys the oth­er­world­ly des­o­la­tion of hav­ing no one to talk to, and the fight-or-flight fear brought on by social sit­u­a­tions for the unso­cialised. The anguish of being unsure when to leave a sit­u­a­tion, the melan­choly of going or not going to par­ties by your­self, the humil­i­a­tion of mis­read­ing the ges­tures of well-mean­ing blokes, and the hor­ror of being asked ​“what are you up to at the week­end?” if you aren’t up to any­thing at all, are vis­cer­al­ly evoked.

Amanda’s take on lone­li­ness bor­rows from pre­vi­ous films explor­ing youth­ful iso­la­tion in tone and tem­po – stac­ca­to, car­toon­ish move­ments are Ander­son­ian, Moon­rise King­dom-ish – but it is dark­er. Though humor­ous and not with­out hope, this is no fairy tale, for the mon­ster under the bed is exis­ten­tial despair – and many of the char­ac­ters encoun­tered are touched by this.

There is also a grimy moder­ni­ty going on. Find­ing rea­sons to leave the house and speak to peo­ple is a fair­ly uni­ver­sal first world prob­lem post the-pan­dem­ic-that-shall-not-be-named, as many human inter­ac­tions are medi­at­ed by a screen, and child­hood in gen­er­al can last longer and longer – par­tic­u­lar­ly for those who aren’t land­ed gen­try, because of the var­i­ous eco­nom­ic fac­tors that delay the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fly­ing the nest.

There is an unbal­ance cre­at­ed by this nasty unpopped ker­nel of a grim, pal­lid ver­sion of real­i­ty at its core, beneath the sweet sur­re­al­ness of stolen hors­es and fire­crack­ers. Too real for its whim­sy and too whim­si­cal to be real­is­tic, Aman­da will like­ly linger on those peo­ple who don’t leave their bed­rooms much, more than on the rea­sons why they should – and that stunts its charm.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.