Review: THE SICILIAN GIRL

THE SICILIAN GIRL, La siciliana ribelle, is a Foreign Language film in Italian. It was directed by Marco Amenta and it has a running time of 115 minutes. The film is based on true events that brought about the arrest and conviction of members of the Sicilian Mafia.

The film starts out with a seventeen year old Sicilian girl, Rita (played by Veronica DAgostino) handing over a gun, which is the only memento she has from her deceased father. Jump back seven years and the story starts to unfold. It is 1985 and the church bells are tolling. Rita is a precocious 10 year old, whose mother does not like her but whose father adores her. They have a special relationship that excludes the mother. Her father takes her out on what appears to be an innocent motorcycle ride that turns ominous with a plume of black smoke rising in the distance. They stop to investigate and find a house aflame, a dead body and a distraught family. The father shields Rita from the horror but not really. This sets the tone for the movie of the violence that exists in the village just below the surface of ordinary life. It is well established that Rita father is a respected man in the village. Her father and uncle are encouraging her to learn to ride her bike at the same time they are talking about changing the family business over to the selling of narcotics. Rita father is against the change and so the story begins.

Rita is dressed for her First Communion, riding her new bike while her father looks on only to have him executed before her eyes. The town people disappear as shutters and doors are slammed shut against Rita cries for help. In her distress, Rita turns to her uncle for help only to have her much older brother pull her out of the meeting. Rita does not understand what has happened and insists that her brother take her back to get a promise of revenge from her uncle for her father death. The brother finally, in a fit of rage, tells her that the uncle is the one who had their father killed, and that they must be patient and wait until they can take out their revenge. He tells her that they must be quiet, watch and keep a record of what goes on in the village and family business. Rita begins her journals. She keeps a record of everything that she witnesses. Fast forward seven years, the brother has a plan in place to kill the uncle, but the plan goes awry and he is murdered. Rita understands now that the revenge that she wants can only be gotten by breaking the mafia code of silence and speaking to the anti- Mafia judge (Gerad Jugnot) . It is the first time someone from the Mafia world rebels and speaks out. Unbeknownst to Rita, with her journals, she is a perfect mole to disclose information that will put the Sicilian Mafia in jail and be a perfect witness for the prosecution. As the threats mount, and people around her are murdered, Rita’s will is almost broken to the point of discontinuing in the battle against the Mafia and her hometown. If I tell more it will spoil the film.

I enjoyed this film a lot. It is one that will be watched again and again. The violence of the events was alluded to but never fully shown. This helped to create the understanding of how the villagers and townspeople could be lulled into thinking that it was normal behavior. It is an interesting character study of how ones environment can influence behavior. Think of  THE GODFATHER and Good FELLAS. THE SICILIAN GIRL will be released in the US on October 15, 2010.

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

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