L’estranea (The Spiral), 2026.
Directed by Paolo Strippoli.
Starring Jasmine Trinca, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Adriano Gianni, and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi.
SYNOPSIS:
A mother arrives at her daughter’s apartment during a storm to confess a lie that undermines their family’s foundation, leading to an unravelling relationship between them.
The most important thing in cinema isn’t knowing how to move the camera; it is what to point it at. Co-writer/director of L’estranea (The Spiral), Paolo Strippoli, is fantastically technically assured and confident for such a young director. He is in control of the camera, is great with visuals and special effects and vitally gets great performances out of his well-cast actors; however, the story lacks originality and surprise.
The plot concerns Anna (Jasmine Trinca), a Mom who flies in during a hurricane to urgently relay to her daughter a terrible family secret. The film is divided into 4 chapters for each member of the family: daughter in the 90s, son in the 2000s, father in the 10s and then climaxing in present day while briefly cutting back to the story being told throughout. It is the standard Monkey Paw/Deal with the devil scenario, although inflation must have hit these deals hard because, despite their setup filtered through Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s fun performance as L’estranea, they are all too obviously bad deals that are in no way tempting.
Help your daughter’s leg heal so she can maybe star in a commercial in exchange for your son becoming clinically obese doesn’t seem compelling at all. It’s the kind of present-day bad deal promoted to kids that don’t know how good we had it. Had the film dug a tad deeper into Anna’s psychosis beyond ratcheting up standard genre paranoia, the material would work a lot better, but the result is fine.
The frustrating bug in Strippoli’s storytelling framing is that within the narrative it makes no sense. Anna tells her daughter a story she lived through that her mother already told her just to catch up the audience. Perhaps if the daughter’s story were the prologue before flashing forward into a three-act structure, it might flow better. There is a little bit of fat in the middle as you wait to get to the next bargain, but there are some inspired bits as well.
A tragic sequence involving a family emergency while caught in traffic during the 2006 Italian World Cup Final is so inspired it is no wonder Strippoli revealed it was part of a childhood memory and borne out of a hatred for soccer. A filmmaker revealing their unpopular, passionate hatred is the stuff of great cinematic expression.
The scope of an 1.85 aspect ratio (equivalent to Digital IMAX in the theatre) conjures up some ambitious images in this small film. The herding of guests all dressed in white toward an animal attack at a backyard festival, the aforementioned traffic jam during a fireworks celebration or the water-logged finale with better special effects than the Zack Snyder film I watched right before (and better photographed too!) in addition to naturally smooth, balletic camera movement (no wonder, Italians invented ballet.)
Despite the fresh inspiration and cool camera moves, however, L’estranea just ends up being okay. There is not much new here, and the movie feels more like a calling card of what its director is capable of, as the story remains threadbare. However the aforementioned finale with the hurricane flooding the apartment has a truly impressive technique that combines the doors sequence from Monster’s Inc. with something out of a Remedy or Batman video game or, if I’m sticking to film references Kubrick’s 2001.
One thing that made me uncomfortable watching the film was the seemingly incestuous relationship between the siblings that recalls Paolo Sorrentino’s work in The Hand of God, so maybe it’s an Italian cultural thing. But one thing is for sure: they know cinema!
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Will Hume
