Paolo Virzi’s delightfully deceptive “Caterina in the Big City” is one of the richest, most satisfying Italian films of recent years.
Its premise seems simple enough, which is to take Caterina (enchanting Alice Teghil), a lovely, intelligent teen, from the provinces and drop her into a vast and venerable school in Rome whose students’ parents are among the country’s elite. Gradually, the film becomes as much about Caterina’s parents as it is about her, and Virzi offers a mural of contemporary Italian society as rich as that of Mexico in “Y Tu Mamá También” but with an even more biting point of view.
Caterina, who sings in the school choir, seems as happy in her small town as her father, Giancarlo (Sergio Castellitto), is miserable, having been stuck teaching accounting for 13 years at a high school. At last his transfer back to his native Rome comes through, and he and dutiful wife Agata (Margherita Buy) move into his family’s old apartment, where his elderly aunt still lives.
In time Caterina is caught up in a snobby, fast-moving high life, but as she seemingly is achieving rapid social progress Virzi shifts the focus to Giancarlo, a prickly, overbearing and frustrated man who increasingly lashes out at the rigid exclusivity of society’s power elite. The strength of “Caterina” is that, although Giancarlo is accurate about the elite, it reveals him to be his own worst enemy.
Virzi’s consistently buoyant inventiveness allows him to take a decidedly unpredictable course in winding up his wonderful film.
