Family values, but Mafia style
Propelled by rage and preternatural inner strength, 17-year-old Rita Atria broke the Mafia’s code of silence in 1991, her childhood diaries serving as key evidence leading to numerous convictions.
“The Sicilian Girl,” a straightforward fictionalization of her story, adopts conventions of the mob genre, from the inky chiaroscuro shadows to the operatic intensity of melodrama. Less nuanced and more accessible than the recent “Gomorrah,” the film is alternately clumsy and poetic. If not entirely satisfying, it stays with you nonetheless, capturing the oppressiveness of the criminal brotherhood and the cost of an extraordinary young woman’s courage.
Sicilian photojournalist Marco Amenta, who also made a documentary about Atria, has named his protagonist Rita Mancuso and depicts her first as a smart-mouthed 11-year-old (Miriana Faja). She worships her father (Marcello Mazzarella), an elegant Mafia boss -- “He solved people’s problems,” she says -- and embraces her community’s hatred of the police.
When she first crosses paths with Palermo’s chief prosecutor, Paolo Borsellino, played with humility and compassion by French actor Gerard Jugnot, she’s giving him lip for daring to question Papa about a murder.
But when they meet again, she’s a teen galvanized by hatred of the man she once called Uncle Salvo (Mario Pupella); she wants to enlist the quiet cop in her mission to avenge the murders of her father and brother. Gradually placing her trust in the police -- and growing to love Borsellino like a father -- Rita enters the witness-protection program. But learning to navigate the streets of Rome is far easier than letting go of her Sicilian boyfriend, himself a Mafioso, or her bitter mother (portrayed without apology by Lucia Sardo).
In her first major role, Veronica D’Agostino has an earthy fury as Rita, convincing as a girl who’s old beyond her years yet still in the process of finding her identity. Shedding her mourning black and Old World ways, she becomes a vibrant teen, if all too briefly. Darker pressures persist: In the Palermo courtroom she stares down each accused man and withstands taunts.
Despite the film’s more obvious and formulaic sequences, it’s an affecting account of how, for Rita and her protector, each step toward truth tightens the circle in which they’ve cast their fate.
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‘The Sicilian Girl’
Rating: No MPAA rating
Running time: 1 hour,
51 minutes
Playing: At Landmark’s Nuart Theatre, West L.A.
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