The Cinema of Francesca Archibugi

Abstract

THEMES AND MOTIFS IN THE CINEMA OF FRANCESCA ARCHIBUGI THE Italian cinema of the 1980s and 1990s has been characterized by a new trend labelled carineria. Enrico Magrelli defines this style as a form of creative aphasia that tries to metabolize fragments of the commedia all'italiana. He maintains that it imitates "the aesthetics of the reality-shows and talk-shows by exploiting cliché family chronicles and illustrating a catalogue of human passions" (Zagarrio 13). The carino genre has produced nice and sentimental films, criticized for revealing the contemporary directors' inability to narrate ambivalent, mysterious images or enigmatic ideas. This kind of cinema, denigrated with euphemisms such as "dignified, evasive, and promising" (Vitti 235), shows a disinterest in the exploration of the world of the soul and the mind, and insists on the complete removal of serious topics like history, politics or memory. Critics have defined Archibugi's cinema as carino (Sesti 1994)...