Las hermanas Macaluso

Emma Dante's adaptation of her own play is a touching tale of the lives of five Sicilian sisters. Told in a distinct three act structure, we first meet them when their ages range from young adults to a pre-teen. Their parents have passed on and they make ends meet by raising doves. They laugh, they play and they squabble. There is an innocence to their bonds. Years later, we catch up with them after a family tragedy. Their lives have been changed, and not all for the better. Two of the sisters still live together in the family home. The third act takes place in that same homestead now with the women old and gray.

A synopsis isn't what the movie is about. Each act essentially takes place in one single day - remarkably, it's enough to tell their life story. Dante's approach is to let the details tell their life stories. The house itself becomes a unifying character. The decorations and objects of their youth still haunt their present. It's a daring approach, and Dante makes it cinematic with atmosphere and poignancy. The final act is told without any meaningful dialogue at all. The acting is good, all the more challenging because there are up to three actresses per role.

It's ultimately a pretty sad bittersweet tale, but, Dante imbues it with life. What's really impressive is that the entire film is only 89 minutes long. Proof positive that a "short story" can be just as moving as an epic.

Adapted from her own stage play, Emma Dante's film 'The Malacuso Sisters' serves up a trio of vignettes of a Sicilian family at different stages of their lives. Key to the story, such as it is, is a tragedy that strikes them at the end of the first part. This beginning, in which the sisters are still children, is nicely assembled and deftly observed. But thereafter the film fails to develop (rather than just imply) a plot, and relies on heavy use of sentimental music to paper over the cracks. One feels there's a tale to be told about these people; but somehow this movie shies short of telling it.

This movie is a "remake" of a very famous Italian modern theatre play, author of which being Emma Dante, a Sicilian playwright and director. Very interesting point was the production design of the apartment of the sisters - very extravagant, seen as the 6th sister. The film is heavy, very very indie. For me it was practically a movie on the processing of mourning and enormous sense of guilt that has not been processed. The sisters kinda literally fall apart because of not getting over the tragic accident in their youth. I was not convinced by the cast of adult sisters, because together with costume and make up choices it seemed something surreal - three sisters live together for decades in a real decay, not only external, but also internal. The story of the "guilty" sister was also unclear. Her reading, her life, her story - without a clear meaning.

There are five siblings all living in the same house in Sicily, of varying ages, and this film takes us through their lives, loves, trials and tribulations as they must deal with each other and their respective choices and aspirations as they all grow older and deal with tragedy. It's told back to front, really, as we reflect on the life of "Antonella" (Viola Pusateri) whilst dancing around the timelines of what's gone before. It was probably easiest to depict the initial stages of their lives as youngsters growing up and meeting life's new challenges in different ways - boys, girls, hormones, you name it, and for me that segment of the film works best. As they all mature, though, it rather stagnates - a fair reflection on a daily grind best epitomised by the eldest, "Maria" (Eleonora De Luca) who has to take responsibility at a fairly young age and who never really loses, or knows how to lose, that, but not always the most scintillating to watch evolve. It's that despair, with or without a capital 'D' that, together with the house in which they live, provides a rather depressing template for a story that sucks the joy and hope from their characters and leaves them as once aspirational now shells of women whom I found it quite difficult to either relate to nor to sympathise with. What I did like was the paucity of dialogue as it progressed. The imagery, repetitive at times but poignant too, starts to leave our own imagination to do some of the heavy lifting here as we fill in our own interpretation of many of the elements we don't see or learn about directly from the screenplay. It's at times quite a powerfully objective look at the constraining nature of close and intimate family life, but with little real attempt made to give these ladies much depth, I struggled to remain engaged.

I liked the feel of the first third of this film, but the opportunity to establish the characters of the five sisters was squandered.

Without knowing more about each sister, it was hard to care what did -- or did not -- happen to each of them. Each sister seemed to have a key trait -- applying lipstick, reading books, etc. -- but I really wanted and needed their characters to be fleshed out.

For me, the most interesting part was when the "sister who reads books", read a passage from a book that I felt sure was The Great Gatsby. (I didn't search to find the passage she read out, so I can't confirm my hunch.)