MQFF NOTES: Arianna (2015, Dir. Carlo Lavanga)

“I was born twice – three times, actually. A boy the first time, and a few years later I was born again as a girl. The third time, I was born.”

I don’t know if director Carlo Lavagna (and his co-writers Carlo Salsa and Chiara Barzini) were hoping these opening lines to perplex or disorient, or both. Whatever the intent, it is a statement that places Arianna, and its protagonist (played by the mesmerising Ondina Quadri), in a state of ethereal questioning – knowing and not knowing at the same time.

For Arianna, the questions are simple: When will my period come? Why aren’t my breasts bigger? Why does sex not bring me pleasure? But the answers are hard. At least the answers are considered hard by her parents, who have made decisions for her for all of her 19 years. Breaking away from them while staying at the family’s long disused house on the coast, Arianna sets out to take control of her life and her uncooperative body.

Lavagna is a film stunning to look at on multiple levels. If it is possible to pull one’s eyes away from the magnetic performance of Quadri, the pastel coloured production design enthrals. If one can pull oneself out of that, the photography of Hélène Louvart absorbs in turn. There is never a moment that one cannot get utterly lost in. But aestheticism isn’t Arianna’s primary concern, even if the manifestation of outer beauty is one of the film’s most pressing. Burrowing into that beauty and experiencing the pleasure within it (or not, as the case may be) grow to be equally important.

Lavagna’s circular structure doesn’t leave much room for in depth exploration of this. In many respects Arianna concludes with nothing more than a realisation of something we (the audience and Arianna herself) possibly already knew. But that realisation comes with an embracing sense of self, and with the understanding that Arianna has grown into a person who will eventually thrive on the flux into which she has been born.

★★★★

Trailer:

Arianna screened as part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2017. 

You can check out other films from the festival here.