Caterina in the Big City (2005)

"Caterina va in città" seems like your typical teen film. It somehow reminds me of "Thirteen", but it goes a little deeper than the average American teen film. In American teen films the parents are normally reduced to simple shadows that serve more as a background for their sons and daughters' lives - they are either of the preaching-repressive sort, or the tolerant, ever-forgiving parents, that eventually through love will help their children to the way of redemption.Not so, "Caterina va in città". In this film, not just Caterina ( Alice Teghil) but her parents as well are portrayed as three-dimensional human beings and this makes the film more interesting.Caterina and her parents move from a small Italian town to Rome. And there Caterina's life will be shaken. She goes to high school and meets new friends - many new things happen in her life. She feels uprooted from her old self, and doesn't know anymore who she really is. One can say that "Caterina va in città" is a coming of age film - it portrays her search for her place in the world - many American teen films tell the same story. But what differentiates this film from its American counterparts is the attention it gives to the parents. The father Giancarlo (Sergio Castellito) is a deeply disturbed personality. He thinks the world revolves around him and there's a conspiracy of important segments of society whose main aim is preventing him from succeeding in life. He is an egoist that treats his wife as a dumb servant and his daughter as a beautiful puppy. But no, he's not a "bad" man - in his own distorted way he loves his wife and his daughter. Sergio Castellito gives us a stellar interpretation as the problematic father, underlining his pathetic and quixotic traits. Agata (Margherita Buy), is his ever-enduring wife - she has a deeper layer than it may appear at first glance. And there's Caterina living with them, seeing them with her innocent eyes. The other characters in the film are what one could call walking clichés. Nothing that has not been shown before in American teen movies. Politics shows its colors in the film, but in a very superficial way. It's not really essential for the film's story - left and right could have been easily substituted for rival football teams.The ending (difficult to imagine in American films) will come as a surprise and have a liberating effect on the viewer. All in all, "Caterina va in città" is a good teen film thats stands a bit above the usual film of the genre.

'Caterina va in citta' ('Caterina in the Big City') is an Italian film that takes as its storyline the coming of age of a young teenager transported by her family from the quiet Tuscany seaside village of Montaldo Di Castro to the challenging realities of Big City Rome, but that is only the means to an end of exploring Italian politico-social life and its effects on the youth of today. It comes very close to drowning in its own excesses, but at the root of the film is a sensitive tale of a young girl's struggles with growing into an adulthood that puzzles, frightens and challenges her.Caterina (Alice Teghil) finds her greatest moments of happiness in her home town singing mezzo soprano in the choir: simple pleasures in a simple setting surrounded by country folk content to live life day to day. Her father Giancarlo (Sergio Castellitto) is a teacher who can't hold a job, partially because he is so outspoken and partially because he is a raving truly obnoxious person. Her mother Agata (Margherita Buy) is subservient, a woman with few coping mechanisms who allows her odious husband to run an abusive household. Giancarlo's aunt is ill in Rome and with the idea of finding a job where his talents are respected, Giancarlo uproots his little family and moves to the big city. There the social castes are evident and Caterina is judged a country hick until she is befriended by first a rebel who bonds with Caterina, introduces her to tattoos and liquor, and causes a schism between her important mother (Giancarlo hoped to have is novel published by the woman), the daughter and his family. Caterina then is absorbed into the rich and spoiled rank and file of the wealthy, not fitting in until the girls do a make over. That situation is again disrupted by Giancarlo's blindly inappropriate behavior. The true Caterina is somehow lost, still dreaming of becoming a fine mezzo soprano, but tagging along with the crowd du jour. Ultimately Giancarlo's multiple and consistent failures drive him away from the family, he rides off to oblivion on his restored motorbike, and Agata and Caterina both bloom.The noise level of this film is such that it is difficult to watch: the young girls means of communication is a mixture of screaming, loud talking, and fighting and otherwise making us uncomfortable. Yet underneath all of the political and social expose and brandishing is a truly wonderful young Caterina whose life as a soap opera is watched tenderly by an Australian boy who plays the guitar and observes her family from a window across the way from Caterina's Rome home. The moments toward the end of the film when the playback comes justifies the fuss of getting there.This is not a film this viewer would sit through again, but reflecting on the story after all the commotion is over, hearing Mozart's 'Ave Verum Corpus' and Verdi's 'Nabucco" etc as the inspiration behind Caterina's honest dreams, makes is a more memorable experience. In Italian with English subtitles. Grady Harp

I found it very hard to bring up sympathy for the characters in this film. Acctualy, the only person I liked was the chauffeur, and only because he slapped one of the annoying kids. All the characters were awfully stereotyped and practically all the events were clichés. It was very easy to predict what was going to happen. The two girls that represent the two political visions are the best examples.Due to the fact that I'm Dutch and not Italian doesn't really give me the right to comment this because I'm not fully familiar with the Italian political atmosphere etc. Maybe in Italy it is that Black/White...

One of the best movie I've seen recently. An exciting coming of age, an exhilarating comedy, a deep and painful portrait of our society at the present moment."Caterina Va in Città" has outrageously funny scenes — starting with Giancarlo's biting farewell to his despised small-town students. But it's a very dark sense of humor. The film is really about personalities, especially his. Imagine a standard coming-of- age movie about a smart, unusual kid learning that it's okay to be an individual, different from the rest. Giancarlo is that kid, only he's 40-something and he hasn't had that final scene where everything turns out okay. Angry that others have gotten all the breaks in life, he righteously criticizes the establishment, big money, the old boys' network, and yet envies them at the same time. Back in Rome, he has a chance to mingle with exactly the class of people he inwardly resents, and every chance he gets to make a mark among them turns to embarrassment.Played with great flair by Sergio Castellitto (the insouciant chef from "Mostly Martha"), Giancarlo is an enormously sympathetic but uncomfortable character, and his contradictions have a ripple effect on everyone in his orbit. His wife Agata (Margherita Buy) lives in a shell rather than get in the way of her grandiose husband. Caterina (Alice Teghil) is thrust uneasily into a social scene she's thoroughly unprepared for, made even more out of place by her dad's instructions. She doesn't seem to have inherited his low self-esteem, but this new life flies way over her head most of the time. It's a complex portrait of a family's struggle, set amid the tumult of big-city society and class consciousness. "Caterina" is a very rewarding movie.