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Laura Luchetti on Man Ray, Lee Miller, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jacques-Henri Lartigue: “The inspiration for me was photographs and photographs and photographs.” Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

The day after Cinecittà and Film at Lincoln Center’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema opening night screening in New York of Edoardo De Angelis’s masterful The War Machine, Laura Luchetti joined me inside Film at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater for a conversation on her latest film, The Beautiful Summer (La Bella Estate) starring Deva Cassel (Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel’s daughter), Yile Yara Vianello, and Nicolas Maupas.

Based on the novel by Cesare Pavese, previously adapted by Michelangelo Antonioni in Le Amiche, Luchetti energetically and with flair takes us to 1938 Turin and the fashion atélier where 17-year-old Ginia (Yile Yara Vianello) works under the perceptive eye of Signora Gemma (Anna Bellato). She lives with her brother Severino (Nicolas Maupas...

The Beautiful Summer (La Bella Estate) lives up to its title: The screen is alive with the sensual glow of balmy days and nights — and, specifically, with the youthful giddiness that the warmest season rouses. In the uneven period drama, a country girl starts to make her way in the big city and is drawn into a bohemian circle, intrigued by the impetuous painters who turn out to be cads and especially by a free-spirited, sad-eyed model. The romance at the movie’s core doesn’t deliver the intended emotional impact, but there’s a tender, potent resonance to other aspects of the story.

“Freely inspired” by the 1940 novel of the same name by Cesare Pavese, the third feature from writer-director Laura Luchetti (Twin Flower) sometimes slides into cliché or loses momentum, but it also offers some sharp coming-of-age observations and a delectable physicality, and it’s anchored by the...