If you weren’t aware of who she is, the writer Goliarda Sapienza had a fascinating life. An Italian actress and author who gained widespread acclaim for her novel, “L’arte della gioia,” only after she had passed away, Sapienza is the type of historical intellectual whose life of hardship would make a great film. Unfortunately, despite clearly having a great deal of affection for its subject, Mario Martone’s “Fuori” is not that film.
“Fuori,” which translates to “Outside,” leaves us frustratingly closed off from its central figure. The film, which charts her time in and out of prison in the early 1980s, jumping between before-and-after timelines, tries to build out Sapienza’s emotional connections to the people she met there. Unfortunately, everyone gets underserved by a shallow script.
Premiering Tuesday in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, the film first picks up with an out-of-work Sapienza (Valeria Golino) in 1980’s Rome going about her day and struggling to get work. She calls about job listings for cleaning jobs, only to be told they’re filled and she is too old to take the job without any experience. She shows up at a restaurant hoping to work in the kitchen and gets the same answer.
Weighed down with financial instability, she becomes drawn to people from her past, going out with Roberta (Matilda De Angelis), whom she met while incarcerated for theft. Their interactions are familiar, each settling into old rhythms, though it seems like something else may be going on in the background of Roberta’s life. The trouble is, much like the rest of the film that follows, we only get glimpses of that life as the film becomes increasingly scattered. Whatever seems important in one scene — Sapienza’s financial precariousness, a new connection, even a suicide attempt — never gets established with any real depth.
Even as “Fuori” manages to have emotional impact, it cuts between its two timelines inside and outside of prison so often that it never comes together into a compelling whole. As written by Martone and co-writer Ippolita Di Majo, it’s a film that feels like a half-told story where you have to strain to see who it is that Sapienza was. We only get the broadest sense of her desires and her fears. Big choices pass without the film allowing us to engage with them in any meaningful way.
So for all the ways it keeps referring back to the past, there is little substance as “Fuori” fails to paint full portraits of its characters in either timeline. It’s a film in search of a character whose sole saving grace may be that it leads its audience to read Sapienza’s work for themselves — because the movie doesn’t do her or her legacy justice.
The post ‘Fuori’ Review: A Goliarda Sapienza Biopic That Fails to Do Her Justice appeared first on TheWrap.