THE STORY – Rome, 1980. After the magnum opus “The Art of Joy” she has been working on for a decade is rejected by the Italian publishing world, writer Goliarda Sapienza ends up in prison for stealing jewelry, but the encounter with some young inmates turns out to be a life-changing experience.
THE CAST – Valeria Golino, Matilda De Angelis, Sylvia De Fanti & Elodie
THE TEAM – Mario Martone (Director/Writer) & Ippolita Di Majo (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 115 minutes
While not as internationally acclaimed as his fellow countrymen Nanni Moretti, Paolo Sorrentino, and Matteo Garrone, the Naples-born Mario Martone is, on his better days, one of the finest chroniclers of parts of Italian society and culture. The most recent example of this is his film “Fuori,” which probably also has more substantial potential for an enduring shelf life outside of its home country since it deals with a literary figure whose (posthumous) fame began abroad (including France, which co-produces the movie): Goliarda Sapienza.
Originally an actress and dubber, Sapienza began her career on the stage, performing in Luigi Pirandello’s plays in her (and his) native Sicily, before eventually transitioning to the screen via her then partner Francesco “Citto” Maselli (a friend and collaborator of Pier Paolo Pasolini). However, most of her film roles were uncredited. She began writing in 1953 but found little success in the field, a detail that contributed to bouts of depression and suicide attempts (though she eventually died of natural causes). Her most famous work, “The Art of Joy,” was rejected by multiple publishers due to its length (700 pages) and remained on the shelf until 1998, two years after her death.
Martone’s film, co-written with his partner Ippolita Di Majo (his main collaborator since 2014’s “Leopardi,” also about a tormented writer), focuses on a crucial period of Sapienza’s life in the early 1980s. At that point, she is so impoverished she has to resort to occasional thefts. One such misdeed lands her a five-day stay in Rome’s Rebibbia prison, where she befriends some of her fellow inmates and keeps in touch with them after they’re all released. This will lead to some of her most acclaimed writings, including a book on how these women adjust to life outside (fuori) after the time spent on the inside (dentro).
Crucial to the film’s appeal, which captures the period atmosphere with accuracy and vibrancy, is the central casting of Valeria Golino as Sapienza, although one layer of that choice will probably go over most viewers’ heads outside of Italy: while best known as an on-camera performer, both at home and internationally, Golino is also a respected director, and right before embarking on this project she helmed a TV adaptation of “The Art of Joy,” which also played in cinemas domestically and screened out of competition at Cannes last year. Thus, having explored Sapienza’s world from the outside, Golino has a unique in when it’s time to embody the author herself. And it is embodiment rather than impersonation. However, she does nail some of the subject’s mannerisms (as seen in the closing credits, which play against archive footage of a televised debate between Sapienza and famed Italian journalist Enzo Biagi). Genius and neurosis go hand in hand as we witness the juxtaposition of the highs and lows of a major artist’s life, a life ripe for rediscovery on a global scale.
On the supporting performance front, the lion’s share of the screentime goes to Matilda De Angelis, one of Italy’s rising stars of the last ten years (including some American exposure via a key role in the HBO miniseries “The Undoing”), whose status as a mentee of sorts to Golino is reflected in the relationship between their characters. This messy pseudo-familial bond is occasionally challenged in ways that allow the two actresses to partake in an acting duel while still managing not to go over the top, keeping it all very understated even as emotions grow in volume. The third significant performance, and perhaps the most revelatory to Italian audiences, comes from Elodie, a singer who has been making a name for herself in film roles as well, sometimes combining her two worlds (she was the voice of Sarabi in the Italian dub of “Mufasa: The Lion King“). Here, she’s radiant and vulnerable at the same time, stripping away all artifice to blend in with a carefully pondered environment where the acting feeds a larger discussion on women’s status at the time without getting preachy about it. While obviously an issue, their situation never overtakes or outweighs the film’s cinematic ambitions.
Having previously made films that were mainly about men (sometimes to the active detriment of any female characters), Martone proves refreshingly adaptable, alongside his regular crew, in adjusting his gaze to what is very much a new universe to him. Reteaming once again with cinematographer Paolo Carnera and editor Jacopo Quadri, he conjures a warm and harsh world that is fascinating and excruciating, a mesmerizing whole with tantalizing fragments. Most impressively, they work in unison to build on the movie’s premise by sometimes making the outdoor scenes feel more claustrophobic than the ones set within four walls, as the character’s reclaimed freedom turns out to perhaps be anything but.
Goliarda Sapienza (the most pseudonym-sounding of real names, translating roughly as “jolly knowledge”) may not have known much success in life. “Fuori,” perhaps on a double bill with Golino’s “The Art of Joy,” serves as a good entry point for those interested in knowing more about a vastly underrated writer whose texts, while sometimes verbose, were always rich and entrancing, shining a light on societal strata that were just as overlooked as she was. And though her own contributions to cinema received no credit, it will be hard to forget her name after coming into contact with these takes on her life and art. Not necessarily of joy, given her circumstances, but art nonetheless.
