Lo spazio bianco

This one is a ticks all the women's picture boxes, where the fellers are set decoration and the preoccupations are female.

The subject is unfamiliar - Buy's premature baby, in an incubator, comes to dominate her life, though her surroundings intrude - the adult education class she teaches, the society of the ward's mothers, a woman magistrate moved into her block with her sub-machine gun carrying scorta, the power supply, rampaging ants.

Dominated by a commanding performance by star Buy, she generates a plausibly anguished central character and allows herself to look ravaged in close up, though she seems to be in great shape - unless that's a very convincing body double.

Not the easiest film to follow, with it's broken time structure and fantasy interludes, this one is adult and challenging. Interesting use of popular music. Wide screen film making is superior.

This is definitely a woman's movie, evidently directed and written by a woman, with as strong feminine humanity within. Focus is laid on women's unique, eternal capability to rise, again and again, finding inside themselves that force and patience that would seem impossible to find anywhere. Margherita Buy is Maria, a no longer young teacher, leaving alone and having to face alone an unexpected pregnancy: nothing happens really, except waiting for a premature baby to be born or to die, because she does not know, and doctors do not know what will happen. Waiting is the only thing she can do, and we as viewers wait with her, and we admire all her unconscious courage, and patience. It's a dramatic story, but i did not feel anguish or despair, since the dignity and strength of this woman prevailed over any other sentiment. The male presence, or better absence, is just meant to prove this is a women's world, men escape when women stay, men disappear when women stand up, men fall when women rise (with the exceptions existing on both sides, obviously). This is asserted with delicacy and a strong sense of reality, highlighting the most significant moments with a delicate and important soundtrack: Nina Simone's "I wish i knew how it would feel to be free" was the best music choice and the icing on the cake of the picture.