Australian
Screen

Clip description

Lola (Lola Marceli) has begun to go out with men, in the hope of getting some money to live on. One of these is Bruno (Silvio Ofria), her late husband’s best friend. She has warned the younger Stefano (Alex Dimitriades) to stay away from Lucia, but Lucia is also growing up. While her mother is out with Bruno, Lucia (Alice Ansara) allows Stefano into the house to take some photos.

Curator’s notes

In this movie, love is not so much about the heart, as the stomach and other organs. Lola has come through a war where people were starving; she is determined not to be hungry again, even if she has to become a virtual prostitute to put food on the table. There is a strong bitterness in Monticelli’s script – a sense of the brutality of life. The film opens a window on the emotional traumas that some migrants from Europe brought with them after 1947, when Australia’s mass migration program began. These lives are not just subject to harsh conditions in a new country, but a certain kind of madness, made worse by isolation. Lola has become a little unhinged by the struggles of her life and she is visiting that insanity on her daughter.

One of the most effective aspects of the film is a lack of Australian cultural background. There are only a handful of Australians seen in the movie, almost all in a bad light. Lola and the Italians she lives near are living in a kind of migrant vacuum – not yet assimilated and isolated by language and history, especially the women. The men have jobs; almost none of the women do. They cling to family, but a woman deserted by her husband is in a dangerous position.