Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Adam Leon
Starring: Vanessa Kirby, Simon Brickner, Annabel Hoffman, Maya
Hawke
When a major star tells you they wish to work with you but they have a
limited opportunity in which to do so, you had better come up with an idea
quickly.
That's the situation director Adam Leon faced when
Vanessa Kirby expressed a desire to collaborate, having been
impressed by his features Gimme the Loot and
Tramps. With Kirby only available for a brief period in between projects, Leon
devised Italian Studies, a movie that unfortunately feels like it was rushed into production
half-formed. That said, there's enough of interest here to make it a
worthwhile watch for fans of the rising British star.
Kirby plays Alina Reynolds, a writer whom we meet attending a session at
her husband's London recording studio. When she bums a cigarette off a
young American girl (Annabel Hoffman) in attendance, the girl asks
"Don’t you remember me?", but Reynolds has no recollection of an apparent
prior encounter in New York. Then something snaps in her brain. "Was this
when I lost my dog?"
We then cut to the Big Apple, where Reynolds is browsing a hardware store
when she suddenly succumbs to a bout of amnesia. Leaving her dog chained
outside the store, Reynolds wanders the streets of the city, piecing
together fragments of her memory.
And that's largely it. Watching Kirby - a major star, yet still able to
disappear in a crowd without recognition - blend into NYC's throng of
tourists and locals isn't unlike Scarlett Johansson's similar Glaswegian
adventures in Under the Skin. Kirby's amnesia victim is similarly alien (she's an alien, she's an
Englishwoman in New York) in the sense that her surroundings are suddenly
new and unfamiliar, and she's almost forgotten how to be human.
The latter manifests in her defying "social norms", as it's put by Simon
(Simon Brickner), the likeable teenage dork she befriends along the
way. Reynolds, who initially seems quite prim and proper, resorts to petty
theft and gets into Larry David-esque arguments with disgruntled
busybodies. With her filter erased along with her memory, she has no
problem telling someone to "go fuck yourself" when she finds herself
incapable of continuing a reasonable debate.
A chance encounter with a young bookworm reveals that Reynolds is an
admired author of short stories. In a scene that every writer will envy,
Reynolds visits a library and reads one of her own books, essentially
through someone else's objective eyes. Luckily for her, she's impressed
with what she reads.
Reynolds is taken in by Simon's friendly group of teenage friends. They
may dress like the sociopaths of Larry Clark's Kids - all
baggy skateboard attire, though with no sign of any skateboards - but they
couldn't be more affable. Even when Reynolds confesses to having no money
on her person, the kids scrape together enough to pay for her dinner
without question.
Reynolds' street adventures are inter-cut with video footage of the teens
in question being interrogated on a variety of subjects by their new
British buddy. It's unclear whether the young actors are answering in
character or as themselves, but it certainly feels like the latter as they
reveal their worries about encroaching adulthood.
Italian Studies never quite coalesces into a satisfying
narrative. If it initially teases a gender reversal of
Lost in Translation with a teenage boy acting as a tour
guide for an older visitor to an unfamiliar city, that plotline ultimately
never quite materialises. That's a shame, as Kirby and newcomer Brickner
have a genuinely endearing chemistry. With his toothy grin and charming
line in pseudo-philosophising, Brickner enlivens the film every time he
makes an all too brief interjection, correcting the course of a film that,
like its dizzy protagonist, roams the streets of NYC in search of an
identity.
Italian Studies played at the 2021
Tribeca Film Festival. Release details have yet to be announced.
