Women at the cinema, between Chiara and Sissi, in the hall
Susanna Nicchiarelli drew on the work of the medievalist Chiara Frugoni (recently deceased) author of essays on women in the Middle Ages and on Saint Francis the man of Assisi. So he captured the humanity of a female figure like that of Saint Clare (Margherita Mazzucco) friend of Saint Francis (Andrea Carpenzano) on the path of brotherhood and peace at the contemporary on the path of personal and social redemption all female. A portrait of a woman on radical freedom within Christianity with a revolutionary value in the secular sense. Here Chiara is a rebellious girl from the monastery on the road to closure which evidently is not closure for the director either, on the contrary. The nuns of the protagonist will be of an order within the lively and varied (and also missionary) Franciscan journey far beyond its origins. Their place as women in the patriarchal and male world (hard to change) will be this.
“The Corset” by Sissi (Elizabeth of Bavaria) is the story of the mature woman now forty who became the Austrian Empress (Vicky Krieps) dissatisfied with the youthful role that fades over time. The reigning real diva of the era meets Louis LePrince pioneer of cinematographic technique who will facilitate the transition to the film icon since the 20s. CORSAGE (the nineteenth-century corset) is the ‘stringent’ metaphor of the body which compromises the soul and the psyche with ageing: the drama of today’s malaise on the lack of self-esteem between bulimia and anorexia.