Vanessa Kirby is fascinating to watch and follow in writer/director Adam Leon’s “Italian Studies,” a purposefully hazy but compelling survey of New York City and its young minds. The Academy Award nominee of “Pieces of a Woman” uses her celebrity presence among regular New Yorkers for something of a low-key “Under the Skin” as she wades through this crowded society with a blank slate perspective forcing us to see it all with the same new lens. “Italian Studies” is a striking mix of open-hearted storytelling and atmospheric filmmaking, with an overall confidence from Leon and Kirby that’s more pronounced than the script’s slippery nature.
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Alina Reynolds (Kirby) is the author of a revered short story collection that gives Leon’s film its title. But due to a bout of amnesia, Alina does not remember having written the book. Nor does she remember her own name or even how to be a New Yorker. She is truly an alien walking through these streets and intersecting lives, and Leon balances people watching with a couple questionable moments that nudge at her base entitlement before stepping back (as when Alina thinks she can just get ramen noodles from the store without paying). But NYC remains Alina’s big question, especially as she personifies curiosity itself, and the movie asks you not to take this character so literally. Many other directors might try to create an elaborate way for Alina’s amnesia to occur, especially with the city as your playground. There is no such passage in Leon’s script, which largely avoids narrative to navigate its labyrinthine experience.
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Alina finds some guides in this new strange world with a group of teenagers, who quickly accept her. First, she meets Simon (Simon Brickner) at Chelsea Papaya, a hot dog shop; their next stop soon after is the library where Simon hides his weed. She then joins his group of friends, and her time with them seems anthropological but genuine. The teens are creative, anxious, and whimsical, especially when she asks them questions related to how they think—Matt (Fred Hechinger, “The Woman in the Window”) has a charming monologue about how some people see pieces of bread stacked together like a bread sandwich. In other moments, Alina is transfixed by the musical talent of Annika (Annika Wahlstein) and the power of her singing voice. Sporadically, “Italian Studies” will cut to little interviews between Alina and the different young adults, noticeably removed from the concrete environs and sitting in front of green plants, often sharing details about things they are just starting to figure out: love, popularity, their parents. The teenagers (some of them with past acting roles, some not) give Leon’s story its desired slice-of-life feel, even before he uses overt-documentary style.
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It makes sense in the world of “Italian Studies” why they would accept Alina, even if her presence in their group goes against “social norms” (according to Simon). These teens recognize the newness on Alina’s face, and Kirby’s immersive performance is not so much tender but youthful. Especially in segments that capture her in close-up, watching her as she navigates the subway or walks by shops, she appears like a determined child, discovering how things work. At the same time, there is a visible timidity that reads as all too human but is not often seen in adult performances.
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As the third film from Leon, “Italian Studies” shows Leon’s growth as a filmmaker who has established an authorship through his still-perfect record. This time he’s making a movie about the soul within his last two, Cannes favorite “Gimme the Loot” and then “Tramps,” the latter released on Netflix. The pacing is notably different here, as those two were more high-stakes, on-the-ground sprints through the city, sometimes without the young characters wearing shoes or knowing exactly where they were going to end up. “Italian Studies” is of a different speed, but it’s very much how Leon views this world. He loves these New Yorkers as the subjects for close-ups that ask us to study the kids’ faces, just as much as when they are hundreds of feet away, captured in his trademark long-lens shots that are sometimes photobombed by trains. Sometimes the distant camera even gets ahead of the character it’s trying to film, and those raw moments remind you of just how alive the story can be without trying to be at all tidy.
“Italian Studies” is an intriguing reflection by Leon: like Alina, Leon is interested in, if not reverent to, the mindset of youth. The scenes in which Alina hangs with them, or interviews them, have a notable autobiographical element, to whatever degree is intentional. (To create even more meta layers, Maya Hawke is briefly seen as a woman named Erin, who is actually a character in the book “Italian Studies,” who does what Alina is doing now and even dresses like her) The teens are the emotional core of the story, and like Alina, Leon wants to listen to them and give them space.
“Italian Studies” is given a unique texture overall thanks to composer Nicholas Britell, who has been working with Leon since “Gimme the Loot.” (Britell, as you may know, went on to such projects as “Moonlight,” “The Underground Railroad,” “Succession” and more). Britell’s hazy synthesizers and select percussion create a cavernous soundscape, which fashions New York City as a giant art museum that Alina is lost in.
What happened to Alina does not matter, and “Italian Studies” can be a little unrewarding if one looks at it like a puzzle with clues scattered in the non-chronological edit (credited to Sara Shaw, Erin Dewitt, Kristan Sprague, and Betsy Kagan). It’s far more effective for its state of mind, one that has a director reexamining what fascinates him. Leon’s affection for the city and its people is what makes sense most of all. [B+]
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