re:mote voices

Title: Ginger And Cinammon [Dillo Con Parole Mie]
Cast: Stefania Montorsi, Giampaolo Morelli, Martina Merlino, Alberto Cucca, Marco Piras
Director: Daniele Luchetti

Ginger And Cinnamon is a comedy showing as part of this years Italian film festival. The first five minutes or so of the film introduce us to Stefi and Andrea, a 30-year-old couple who have just broken up, we follow each of them as they explain in detail to their friends why things happened the way they did. With this Stefi is a little down, and not really prepared for the arrival of her niece. Meggy is a 14 year old, who should have been going away with the girl scouts for the summer, but she is a liar and a schemer, and turns up at her aunt’s house having “missed” the train.

This is the set up for manipulation, Meggy convinces Stefi to take her to join the rest of the girl scouts. But they are half way to the Greek island of Los when Meggy reveals that she actually didn’t miss the train at all, and in actual fact the rest of the girls have gone to Spain, and she has tricked her aunt to take her to Los so that she can lose her virginity. From there we have the contrasts between the two characters – the stick thin aunt, who thinks she is fat, is strikingly anal, and no doubt a little neurotic, versus the hyper-precocious kid, who is older than her years and convinced she is like way clued up dude.

Despite all the contrasts, and the initial bickering, the two become close, and it is pretty clear that they both have something in common – they are both a little out of their depths on the island of love, surrounded by partying crowds. The film is moved along with the introduction of a couple of guys, Meggy falls for a guy who is the same age as Stefi, and is determined he is the one she will lose her virginity to, while a guy the age of Meggy falls for Stefi, determined that she is the one who will seem him get somewhere. With the film setting a slow burning ironic fuse, that eventually blows with amusing results.