Maternale

An affluent Italian family, an idyllic summer's day, a sumptuous villa, a destructive struggle for power between mother and daughter. Maternale is an intimate and - in its adherence to the unities of time, place and action - highly formalised exploration of 'female' themes: frustrated desires, mother-child rivalry, the regime of the domestic, manifested here in an almost sensual obsession with food. But despite Gagliardo's experimental intentions, it all seems curiously old-fashioned, with the luscious imagery, dreamlike mood, mannered mise en scène, and perhaps partly the 1960 setting, overlaying the film with the faded bloom of art cinema.