Italiencele

Set in today's rural Romania, a culture that seems to resist change despite the provocations of recent history, 'The Italian Girls' tells the tale of 2 young women who decide they will find a better life picking strawberries in Spain.

This is a wonderful social comedy. 'The Italian Girls' is a touching film that avoids sentimentality and a political film that avoids extremism or earnestness. The writer/director, Napoleon Helmis has a light touch and a gift for dialogue. The cast create a world that is both real and comic, held together by Mara Nicolescu's (Jeni) spirited central performance.

I laughed and I cried during the film and when I left the cinema I was moved enough to look it up on IMDb and write a review about it! A new cinema with old values seems to be emerging out of Romania, and Napoleon Helmis is definitely one to watch.

Well, I saw the movie and thought it was interesting ...the fact that two girls from a village in Romania try to get a better life no matter the cost impressed me.Not many people from Romania afford going abroad and those who manage to go there gather fruit or something else to earn money and to send it home.The funny part of the movie is that he two sisters go to Spain illegal and after a year they come home with an western attitude and claim that instead of going to Spain they arrived in Italy where they gathered grapes. The director,Napoleon Helmis wanted to show the real life and to present the things that actually happen in Romania....even if the movie wasn't a total success it captured my attention and made me smile

Badly written and produced, this is not a movie, it is some sort of a home-made cinema about stupid people...There is no insight, no other idea except depicting the "Romanian reality", or that part of the Romanian reality that I don't think would or should interest somebody. While other directors try hard to make a decent film, some of them come with utter trash like this pretending that it's entertainment or, what is regrettably worse, artistic. It is sad to see, how directors that don't deserve to get their movies made, actually make it and hard working directors, that really have something to say are left behind, because it is considered that their movies wouldn't be "interesting enough". Romanians are used with filth and what is worse is that they seem to like it. They deny movies with and idea, with a strong direction in favor of crappy "home made videos" such as this one.

1/10

The film begins as a crazy comedy but gradually becomes more of a drama: two sisters living only with their father, the former Communist mayor of their village, travel to Spain in search of work. They apparently find their way to Italy but, in the end, things turn out differently again. This vitally narrated film progresses in quick rhythm with snappy shots, absorbing images of the post-Communist Romanian countryside as it goes. The feature debut by this young Romanian director offers another angle on the Balkan mentality - its immediate association with joy and sorrow, its profound insight, explosive energy and humour, which is the driving force of life. Helmis presents Balkan chaos as life's farce which nevertheless does have its relaxing moments. (www.febiofest.cz)