Yo la conocía bien

A definite highlight of Italian filmmaker Antonio Pietrangeli's career, on which would be tragically put a kibosh by his untimely death in 1968, in reality, people do die of drowning after falling off a cliff.

I KNEW HER WELL continues his streak of strong female presentation, first and foremost, it is a story about a prelapsarian countryside Italian girl Adriana (a 19-year-old Sandrelli uncannily likens a luscious Taylor Swift), who jauntily pursues her star-making dream in the capital city.

Pietrangeli and his co-writers configure a loosely chronological and episodic narrative detailing the interactions between Adriana and a smorgasbord of male characters, from boyfriends, bedfellows, exploiters to sympathetic have-nots, scathingly refracts the sprawling turpitude infesting the showbiz, that a young and unsophisticated Adriana is always given the short end of the stick, can never fall in love with the right guy, and occasional sparkling of kindness dims quickly since it is just not the right time, and the film's ostensibly disengaged observation gives way to an abrupt kicker in the end, where a dysphoria-stricken Adriana takes a radical step to purge her profound disillusion out of her existence.

Wonderfully concatenating manifold vignettes into a cogent case study pertaining to the disintegration of a starlet-to-be's pipe dream (often meld perfectly with era-specific tuneage and dancing routines), Pietrangeli enlists a swell group of multi-national supporting actors, natives Manfredi (unscrupulous), Salerno (pompous), Fabrizi (smarmy), Nero (four-square), joined by a French (Brialy), a German (Fuchsberger), an Austrian (Hoffman) and a Swiss (Adorf) to bolster the mainstay, among whom, Ugo Tagnazzi brilliantly steals the limelight with his backbreaking tap dance and abjectly obsequious attitude as a struggling has-been.

As our leading lady, Sandrelli is de facto a phenomenal wet-behind-the-ears ingénue, but also excels in bringing about a palpable strength of integrity and defiance that is well beyond her age, yet, more often than not, emanates a ghost of melancholia even when hijinks are in full swing. Unequivocally evokes a young girl's version of Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA, I KNEW HER WELL is an unalloyed Italian hidden gem exhumed from near obscurity with its shimmering amalgamation of vintage style, unaffected poignancy and incisive self-mockery.

Kind of a smaller version of La Dolce Vita with a female lead, this slice of 1960s Roman life is great in its own right. Stefania Sandrelli (probably best remembered as the woman who shared a sexy dance with Dominque Sanda in The Conformist) plays an aspiring actress and model who spends her nights partying her ass off and her mornings alone. The plot is pretty simple and pretty predictable, but director Pietrangeli shoots the film in a very experiential style - it feels like you're partying alongside Sandrelli, and it's just a really wonderful experience. Sandrelli herself is outstanding. It's a character that could come off as a cliché, but she plays her so knowingly and passionately. It's very, very easy to fall in love. The film is stuffed full of wonderful '60s pop songs (the only ones I recognized were by Millie Small, a Jamaican ska artist best known for her hit "My Boy Lollipop"), tremendous clothes and hairdos, and that crisp 1960s black and white. A must-see for anyone who loves the Italian films of this era.

This movie is very well know in Italy and certainly not a "hidden" masterpiece. Stefania Sandrelli gives a star-making performance as Adriana, the silly country girl who tries to navigate waters much too deep and dangerous for her intellectual level.

Adriana is rather ignorant and shallow, but pretty, outgoing and sensual and tries to climb the ladder of success "helped" by several men. Along the way, she has lots of flirts with despicable guys, among which one with Dario. The two spend a weekend at the beach and then Dario leaves her with the bill to pay, for which Adriana must use a bracelet Dario gave her.

This episode underlines not only Adriana's naivety, but also her lack of self-respect. After having been informed by the police that Dario is a gigolo and a thief and the bracelet he gave her stolen, she laughs and takes his defence.

The despicable male characters include famous actor Roberto and "talent scout" Cianfanna. It's most depressing to see the level of moral bankruptcy shared by all the show-biz characters. Only a boxer and a mechanic lack the cynicism of those working in the entertainment industry.

Adriana herself is just a pretty face with an empty head, devoid of self-awareness and pursuing a vague idea of 'success". She listens non-stop to silly pop music, loves dancing and doesn't mind having casual sex, but cannot even make a career out of prostitution, lacking the necessary cunning.

Unrooted from her country background, without any stable relations, without even the awareness of her loneliness, Adriana is just one of the million youngsters pursuing a sterile rebellion without a cause, which eventually will lead to her demise.

A great capsule of life in Italy in the early 60s. There are shades of la Dolce Vita since every scene takes place in summer and features incredible clothing, but our point of view here is radically different: it is that of a vulnerable young woman instead of a successful jaded male intellectual like in the Fellini movie. The vita is not so dolce for the girl played by the innocent-looking Stefania Sandrelli (who was apparently only 19 when she starred in that film, but what maturity she displays as an actress already.) A peasant girl from the sticks, we meet her right away in Rome where she aspires to glamour, stardom, fame etc. But because she does not know anyone, and is both naive and not very bright to boot, she takes many wrong turns and indulges all the wrong people. This film is very entertaining, because we are in Rome in 1964, it feels and looks like a hot summer all along, and the dresses worn by Sandrelli are unbelievably glamorous. But it is a ferocious social satire, and it is tender neither to our silly heroine nor to the sharks who exploit her and many others. The black&white photography is gorgeous on the eyes. Nino Manfredi and Ugo Tognazzi do each a memorable turn among the victim/exploiters that populates this Roman shark tank. Sandrelli is so good (and so beautiful) that she manages to make her character attaching in spite of her flaws.

"She's always happy. She desires nothing, envies no one, is curious about nothing. You can't surprise her. She doesn't notice the humiliations, though they happen to her every day. It all rolls off her back like some waterproof material. Yesterday and tomorrow don't exist for her. Even living for today would mean too much planning, so she lives for the moment."

ADRIANA: "Is that what I'm like? Some sort of dimwit?"

"On the contrary, you may be the wisest of all."

The irony of this pivotal scene is that even this seemingly accurate observation of the character Andrianna barely scratches the surface. Ultimately nobody knows her well, not even the audience, until the final few minutes of the film when we realize we missed something all along. Then we go back and watch the film again and really get to know her.

"I knew her well" is a film from Italy's powerful cinematic renaissance of the 1960s alongside landmarks like Antonioni's "L'Avventura" ("The Adventure"), Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" ("The Easy Life"), and Risi's "Il Sorpasso" (coincidentally, "The Easy Life"). Of those 3 comparisons it's most similar to "Il Sorpasso" in the way it takes the form of a breezy, episodic comedy. In fact "I knew her well" is almost like a road movie itself, except that everything happens in the vicinity of Rome, and instead of the typical windblown convertible used in all road movies Adriana drives a comically tiny clown car. As with the other films, here we get the backdrop of Italy's postwar economic prosperity to immerse us in an almost surreal fantasy world where people seem to have no obligations other than having a good time. But as with all these great films, there's a haunting spectre of what may lie outside, or in this case, behind the carefree façade.

Adriana (played by the wonderfully expressive and cute as a button Stefania Sandrelli) is an aspiring actress with a cheerful disposition like a 1960s Italian Amélie. She's unstoppable and nothing seems to get her down. Even when she is jilted by a lover and left with a large hotel bill, she admires him for his ingenuity and ultimately laughs as she hopes he'll elude the police. As my opening quote implies, she doesn't seem to notice the humiliations though they happen to her every day. And in that respect, we the audience are lulled into an entertaining romp about the catastrophe of life even though in a parallel universe a Neorealist director like De Sica ("Bicycle Thieves") would make us feel the stab of each humiliation. But no, here we become Adriana. We quickly adopt the attitude that life is too short to dwell on the past, or the future, or anything. Right?

Don't expect a plot because this is mostly a series of vignettes over the course of a few days (? We can't be sure as events are deliberately fragmented) in Adriana's life. Around 20 vignettes in total--ok, 19, but I didn't want to seem like a nerd for counting--are presented to us, each full of its own magic. My favorite is a wonderful scene where she befriends a slow-witted but humorous boxer who has just suffered a humiliating defeat in the ring and jokes about his opponent being smart to pick a weak opponent. (See the parallel between him and Andrianna?)

Music plays significantly in this film as Adrianna spends most of her free time dancing, singing and listening to an old record player which she has to kick to make it work. As the music becomes more prominent, we realize that, if anything, the music is the key to "knowing her well". Don't miss the unforgettable final 10 min sequence featuring Gilbert Becaud's "Toi".

A perfectly written, perfectly shot, and perfectly titled film, "I knew her well" rings of the famous line in Hamlet where the prince finds the bones of his childhood pal, the court jester Yorick "of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy ... Now get you to my lady's chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick..."