Starring: Licia Maglietta
Director: Silvio Soldini (Italian)
Rated: M15+
IN Agatha and the Storm, Agata (Licia Maglietta) runs a bookshop, but she gives out advice as much as she sells books.
She is good at living other people’s lives until one day, a young man half her age, and a frequent book buyer, professes his love for her.
Her world changes, and with it she seems to gain the gift of letting off electric charges that can short-circuit houses, cars and streetlights.
When her successful architect half-brother Gustavo (Emilio Solfrizzi) finds out that he was adopted into Agata’s family at an early age, he meets up with his half-brother, and eventually his father.
With him, Agata becomes involved in Gustavo’s birth family’s complex and eccentric lives.
Agatha and the Storm has been nominated for eight awards. It is out of a good stable.
In 2000 Silvio Soldini directed the successful art house comedy Bread and Tulips.
The best word to describe Agatha and the Storm would have to be “quirky” in terms of characters, the story and the cinematography.
Some viewers might think the overall impression is bordering on the bizarre. It certainly overstays its welcome.
There is an intelligence and style behind this film, but we’re given little reason to care about these serially adultering people. They all just seem to very busy doing very little.
I assume one of the reasons why director Silvio Soldini gave his title character the name Agata was to echo St Agatha, the early Christian Roman martyr who is patron saint of single lay women.
The film’s Agata does not emulate the morality of her patron saint, but certainly seems to share her mystical abilities.
Unlike most of her admirers in the film, however, I failed to come under her spell.
