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Italy, Switzerland, France · 2011
1h 40m
Director Alice Rohrwacher
Starring Yle Vianello, Pasqualina Scuncia, Salvatore Cantalupo, Anita Caprioli
Genre Drama
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13-year-old Marta struggles to find her place in southern Italy after growing up in Switzerland. She joins a catechism class at a local church but feels alienated and restless, constantly conflicting with her mother, sister, and teachers. A coming-of-age story about pushing boundaries at home, at school, and in the Catholic Church.
Rohrwacher's picture offers a Dardennes-esque look at a working-class teen's growing pains in a backwater parish in southern Italy. Minor tonal inconsistencies are overcome by this intimate tale's naturalistic thesping and loose lensing style.
Time Out London by Cath Clarke
Stick with it and writer/director Alice Rohrwacher’s first feature reveals another side: taking a small town as a microcosm of Berlusconi’s something-rotten-at-the-core Italy.
Quietly compelling, the cerebral slice of social realism is well worth hunting down.
Alice Rohrwacher's debut fictional feature is an uncommonly insightful portrait of nascent womanhood, assisted in no small measure by Vianello's disarmingly naturalistic performance.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
An accomplished debut.
The New York Times by Rachel Saltz
Ms. Rohrwacher combines a documentary impulse (effective in family scenes) with a more allegorical one. Her film gets clunky when allegory has the upper hand, and that means Corpo Celeste often stumbles, along with its 12-year-old heroine, Marta (Yle Vianello).
With echoes of the Dardennes and Lucrecia Martel, Corpo Celeste's acute sense of place, feel for adolescent confusion and miraculous resolution suggest that Rohrwacher is a talent to watch.
San Francisco Chronicle by Walter Addiego
For those willing to overlook its few slips into heavy-handedness, Corpo Celeste tells a compelling story of a 12-year-old girl thrust into a strange new world.
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