Have you noticed that it’s always other people who die?

So asks Amanda (Benedetta Porcaroli), a 24-year-old single girl adrift in her upper-class life, to childhood best friend Rebecca (Galatéa Bellugi). There’s nothing technically wrong with that descriptor: childhood best friend. Amanda and Rebecca have known each other since childhood, and surely they referred to each other as besties at least once. But to call them childhood best friends is also misleading. And the only person Amanda is good at misleading is herself.

Written and directed by Carolina Cavalli, Amanda is an equally misleading film. It starts quirky and cute with the same type of planimetric compositions and deadpan deliveries that immediately bring to mind the work of Wes Anderson. Amanda would slide nicely into one of those movies: She is thoughtful and motivated, though not in any measurable sense. 

And that’s the energy that draws Amanda into darker spaces. Lonely and always sporting the same white lace shirt with puffy arms and a knit top, Amanda wants a) a boyfriend, b) a best friend, and c) a horse. And since none presents themselves immediately to her, Amanda is going to have to take some liberties getting them. As she tells Rebecca, the two options of life and death bore her. She wants to find a third.

Amanda does a lot of things well but without feeling remarkable. Cavalli and cinematographer Lorenzo Levrini beautifully capture the slowness of youth—that feeling of endless days brimming with possibilities that still somehow go wasted. Money stops a lot of people from doing what they want; time is another. Then there are the hours, days, weeks, and months when you have both but don’t know what to do with either. That’s where Amanda lives.

Cavalli pulls those moments together with a story, though it’s so laconic that it doesn’t all tie together and ends abruptly. No matter, Porcaroli does a good job with Amanda, and Cavalli shows enough visual promise that Amanda isn’t just worth seeing; it’s worth seeing what both will do next.

Amanda (2022)
Written and directed by Carolina Cavalli
Produced by Antonio Celsi, Lorenzo Gangarossa, Mario Gianani, Annamaria Morelli, Malcolm Pagani, Moreno Zani
Starring: Benedetta Porcaroli, Galatéa Bellugi, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Michele Bravi, Monica Nappo
Oscilloscope, Not rated, Running time 93 minutes, Premiered Sept. 5, 2022 at the Venice Film Festival

---