THE STORY – Holly, twenty-eight, has always felt like the wrong version of herself and that her life hasn’t turned out as expected. When she meets a little girl named Arabella, she becomes convinced the child is her younger self. Eager to run away from home, Arabella decides to play along with Holly’s mission: to go back and become someone special.
THE CAST – Benedetta Porcaroli, Lucrezia Guglielmino, Chris Pine, Marco Bonadei & Eva Robin’s
THE TEAM – Carolina Cavalli (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 107 Minutes
As the over-therapized like to tell their friends and loved ones, it’s important to heal and nurture your inner child. Indeed, some adults refuse to grow up, holding onto the innocence and lessened responsibilities of childhood well past the appropriate age. (I’m looking at you, fellow Millennials. Burn that onesie!) Call it Peter Pan Syndrome, call it arrested development, whatever it is, it’s a coping mechanism to avoid the harsh world of adulthood. “The Kidnapping of Arabella” follows a young woman so ill-prepared for the realities of society that she holds onto her childhood in a shockingly literal way. It aims to enchant audiences with its atypical spirit, but despite wonderful performances by the two leads, the film struggles to charm, thanks to an off-puttingly removed energy from all of the characters and non-sequitur-based humor that becomes, frankly, irritating.
The titular Arabella (Lucrezia Guglielmino) is a nine-year-old girl in the middle of a rebellious phase (or perhaps it’s not a phase at all). She doesn’t listen to her father (Chris Pine), who’s a famous writer raising Arabella on his own. After she has a disruptive outburst while her father gives an acceptance speech at an awards dinner, her father sends her off alone with his chauffeur, imploring the driver to take her off his hands for just a bit of time. While out of parental oversight, she manages to wriggle away from her temporary guardian and runs into Holly (Benedetta Porcaroli). This young woman works an unfulfilling job at a local ice rink, and as we come to see, she’s misanthropic, unafraid to be disliked, and uses light blackmail, coercion, and straight-up lies to get what she wants from everyone, from her boss to local fast-food employees. In that way, she and Arabella have a lot in common. Thanks to some idiosyncrasies and quirks of Arabella’s that Holly claims to share, Holly somehow concludes that Arabella (who lies and says her name is also Holly) is actually Holly as a child, somehow transported through the fabric of time and space, and now face-to-face with her older self. Arabella willingly hops in Holly’s car and, while keeping up the bizarre ruse, goes on an adventure where both girls work to outrun their unhappy and unwanted lives, stumbling into unusual situations and meeting strange folks along the way.
As Holly, Porcaroli makes a striking impression. She slips right into Holly’s rascally personality, managing to somehow play her as dispassionately yet humorously as possible. She adopts a disaffected energy, performing acts of subterfuge and dishonesty with an almost perfunctory air. And yet, she remains magnetic, even when her schemes stretch the limits of the audience’s patience when it comes to spending time with such an asocial character. And Guglielmino is a delight as Arabella. If one were to meet an actual child with her penchant for misbehavior, the first response would likely be to put her in a time-out. But like her on-screen grown-up counterpart, Guglielmino brings a winning energy to her character, almost like a Dickensian orphan who inspires both pity and joy, even when they’re taking part in behavior that could most charitably be called “bad,” if not downright troubling. Pine plays a believable sad sack, and to this critic’s admittedly untrained ear, his Italian sounds pretty effortless. But it’s a small part, and any fans watching this just for him may be disappointed with his lack of screentime (not to mention, he’s the character that most aims to halt the adventures of the unlikely pair, meaning he mainly exists as a speed bump to the film’s energy).
Holly and Arabella embark on a mini-odyssey through a world of motels, wedding chapels, and trespassed neighborhoods, running into a host of offbeat characters. But despite their varied situations and environments, practically everyone the pair meets has the same aloof, cynical attitude. This is clearly a choice by director-writer Carolina Cavalli for comedic purposes, but it instead has an exhausting effect. This isn’t helped by the screenplay’s affection for jokes that are random in nature, with characters blurting out dialogue seemingly out of nowhere. Completely non-sensical events occur, such as when the central pair finds themselves staying in a storage room of a hotel with, for no discernible reason, a deaf goat that, as explained, “the owner wants to kill.” These choices, rather than making the film feel quirky and unpredictable, have a numbing effect. It begins to feel tedious waiting for the two girls to run into yet another oddball character delivering more unfunny, off-the-wall observations.
The characters’ above-it-all, disinterested attitude gives the film a feeling of flatness. If nothing matters to practically every character, why should the audience care? And yet, in the film’s final minutes, it suddenly ramps up the sentimentality seemingly out of nowhere, as if the film is asking the audience, “Why aren’t you crying yet?” without having earned such a response. It’s an odd pivot that feels more begrudgingly required on the screenplay’s part than actually earned by the film that came before it.
“The Kidnapping of Arabella” is a strange film, but not in the way it’s aiming for. It feels imbalanced, owing to the compelling, sympathetic central pair brought to life by two great performances, who are forced to interact with truly unpleasant characters in an uninviting world. This odd, destabilizing energy makes for a film that actively pushes viewers away, even if the concluding minutes beg for the audience’s tears, and by that nature, their approval.
