The Macaluso Sisters

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.

I'm not aware of the inspiration behind this story but I guess it must be biographical: yet this is not overly important for the viewer, except for the intimate care we can feel the author put in the production. I loved it.

An apparently minor work which reminded me of 2 other recent films: "August: Osage County" (AOC) and "Roma" which in some sense represent extremes of family life portraits styles. On one side "AOC" scenes and dialogues are so unrealistically poignant that even people with an IQ of 200 would never talk like that (and that fast). I hardly doubt anything except some irrelevant details is historically accurate there: everything feels designed for some purpose. Which is not necessarily bad, just like authenticity isn't de jure good. "Roma" is instead authentically documentaristic in its depiction of events. Yet such elegant realism actually left me detached: I was pleased but I was rarely touched as if repelled by the same barriers we use to protect ourselves from the world. "Le sorelle Macaluso" lies elsewhere: it doesn't offer neither incisive dialogue nor objectivity. Is that a stylistic decision, just accidental or the magic of a masterpiece? I don't care as long as I care so hard for what I see.

On the negative notes: in "Le sorelle Macaluso" unfortunately the characters are somewhat painted with a brush heavier than it could/should have been (and I mostly blame the writers, not the actresses which are on average very good). Too many things aren't ligthtly touched on and left for the viewer intelligence to understand.

Photography is also weak - especially compared with the previously mentioned movies - while music - although unoriginal - features some great choices.

All in all 4-5 scenes alone deserve my praises and justify the view. In particular I found the last 5 mins scene extremely moving, delicate, tragic, poetic and universal: unforgettable. I'm not aware if it's an "original" or the author "lent" it somewhere else: anyway you shouldn't miss it.

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.

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.

Although in the first act the portrait of the girls and adolescent sisters is well created, the adult stages are apartament is well used (those reflections of the furniture on the wall, the absence that is nevertheless very present), but the narration of this permanent mourning, of dreams broken by the tragedy, ends up being trivial.