Three Perfect Daughters

The St. Ali Italian Film Festival opens this week and one of the offerings is this old-fashioned family comedy by co-writer/director, Rolando Ravello. I say old-fashioned because it seems to have come from a vault, at least in the case of the fathers. The daughters in question are 2020s women, trying to get on with things, but their dinosaur dads hatch plans to thwart their love lives. The wives are sisters who just happen to have married these three buffoons. I'd like to think the whole thing is taking a satirical angle on this type of Italian father, though the sentimental way they're ultimately treated doesn't fill me with too much hope. The fact that it's a remake of an equally farcical looking Spanish film called It's For Your Own Good, seems to indicate it's not solely an Italian affliction, though.

Marco Giallini, Vincenzo Salemme and Giuseppe Battiston play the dads, and play them very broadly at that. The mums - played by Isabella Ferrari, Claudia Pandolfi and Valentina Lodovini - are cast as angry harridans or stern but sexy matriarchs, so if you like that kind of thing, have at it. The daughters - played by Matilde Gioli, Alice Ferri and Eleonora Trezza - are probably the pick of the performances, but in reality, the whole cast essentially blend together in this kind of cinematic potato salad.

I'm kind of at a loss to say much more about Three Perfect Daughters. It's not the worst film I've seen all year, and it has a kind of antiquated charm, but it's all so groaningly unlikely (or is it?) that it's hard to take much away from it. Also, as Merv noted, some of the translations seemed to be slightly off. That, or there are certain Italian phrases that just make bugger all sense in English.

See also:

As I can't really think of too many relevant film I've seen, I'll instead run you through some of the films from this year's festival that caught my eye (see link above for details):

• Rome, Open City (1945) Roberto Rossellini - (an amazing film) 
• Cam's War (2020) Laura Muscardin
• Hidden Away (2020) Giorgi Diritti
• Padrenostro (2020) Claudio Noce
• The Predators (2020) Pietro Castellitto
• Tigers (2020) Ronnie Sandahl
• You Came Back (2020) Stefano Mordini