FUORI, the latest work of growing neapolitan director MARIO MARTONE ("Leopardi"; "The King of Laughter" 2021; "Nostalgia" 2022 and a lasting career in both film & theatre) was overlooked at the last Cannes Film Festival, even if it features an excellent subdued performance -that could have earned her a Palme d'Or- by equally growing actress since "Hotshots", "Respiro" (2010), VALERIA GOLINO (1965) now also a keen director of "Honey" (2013), "Euphoria" (2018) and "THE ART OF JOY" (2025): the latter, produced as a highly rated mini-Tv serie of 6 episodes for Sky which just scooped up the biggest number of italian Donatello awards, is the adaptation of maverick sicilian writer-translator-actress-rebel GOGLIARDA SAPIENZA's (1924-1996) litterary masterpiece, discovered posthumously and revered in France, Spain or England as much as Elena Ferrante's "MY BRILLIANT FRIEND".
"FUORI" (meaning OUT) is set the summer of 1980 in new, often unseen, sometime seedy sun drenched (DOP: Paolo Carnera) and tourist-free parts of Rome, still an intellectual capital at the end of the economical boom, despite heroine, tense politics and the threat of terrorist Red Brigades: only a few years before the Lehman crisis and the irreversible cultural decline of Italy since...
The story unspools before and after Gogliarda's brief jailing in an all female (much like the film) prison for stealing jewels from a socialite friend: inside she bonds with all sorts of women outcasts (top young thesp Matilda De Angelis, who reminds us of past italian stars Lea Massari and Francesca Neri; sculptoral newcomer popstar Elodie) who become close friends and will inspire a future bestseller. After the minor scandal, GOGLIARDA SAPIENZA (Valeria Golino), a silent but intense and sincerely unconventional observer, is shunned by her former circle, and adopted by her favourite jailbirds, which she'll prefer forever: "Life in jail was freer than outside, eventhough these women always leave their core inside".
MARIO MARTONE's discreet, more naturalist style now lies light years away from fellow neapolitan diva-director Paolo SORRENTINO, and yet "FUORI" is in my opinion a succesful "reverse" of "The great beauty" (LA GRANDE BELLEZZA).
Unjustly panned in Cannes by Variety, the film opened strong in Italy this week. The US trade magazine called it "obscure and local". This review raises only 1 useful question: can this poetic piece that captures on screen the soul of a poet, Gogliarda, travel? My answer is a resolute Si (Yes!), so long as you stretch your antennas and take this trip as a personal voyage and not as a Hollywood or Sundance ride.
