(rated PG-13, 95 mins.)
West of Sicily is an island that looks like it’s straight out of a Hollywood movie set from Greece. All turquoise and white seascapes. But here, it’s not so calm as rival boy gangs play roughly to capture sea urchins, fathers go out to sea and their wives work in the packing plants. For Grazia (Valeria Golino) a beautiful free-spirit (or manic depressive?), mother to Marinella (Veronica D’Agostino), a teenage boy, Pasquale (Francesco Casisa) and young Filippo (Fillipo Pucillo), life is a challenge. She’s the talk of the village as her eccentricity leads to her being misunderstood. It’s soon decided she needs psychological treatment. That’s when Pasquale kicks in to save his mother and save her honor. Golino portrays a visually beautiful and emotionally disturbed woman with a translucency that draws us into her culturally stagnant world. Young Pucillo steals scenes with his energy and prankster stunts. But it’s Casisa (her older son) who steals the show with a raw sensitivity beyond his years, certainly a result of his disciplined surroundings. The movie is a sub-titled, sweet, sometimes shocking story with cinematography of Sicily both magnificent and gritty, paralleling the movie’s theme.
