Gatta Cenerentola

It is really a shame I'm writing the first review of this utterly beautiful animation. How come this fine piece of art gets so overlooked?!

Loosely based on the Giambattista Basile's fable of the same name and Roberto De Simone's musical La Gatta Cenerentola, the plot is set in a decaying future Naples and concerns a mysterious mute teenager called Mia, who struggles to escape from the Camorra boss Salvatore Lo Giusto and her vicious stepmother Angelica.

La Gatta Cenerentola is a 1976 three-act musical, in Neapolitan language, adapted by Roberto De Simone from the sixth fable (Cinderella) of Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone. It debuted in Naples and later premiered in the United States (1985) and Great Britain (1988). De Simone sought to express the dreaminess of southern Italian popular culture. His fresh and authentic reinvention of folksongs brought him prominence. The initial production was favored by theater progressives and opposed by theater purists. Art music blogs rediscovered and praised the musical 30 years after its initial release.

I felt wonder and amazement from the first frame to the last. Comic, poignant, dreamlike, circular animated film that creates simultaneity in some moments between the present, the future and the past. It is as beautiful as an oyster raised in the South: the outer shell is tough and irregular, the meat is good and has a shining pearl inside. The original story is taken from a famous theatrical work by Roberto De Simone, adapted here to social forms and current language, both visual and musical, respecting the original language, Neapolitan, which can be simple, musical, poetic and raw at the same time. And Naples, not photographic, not idealized but always of a poignant beauty. Cinderella doesn't look for the prince, she doesn't look for riches but she asks to grow well, to find her little shoe and move forward.