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One of Italy's most decorated films in recent memory
(5 Italian Academy Awards, Montreal World Film Festival's
Special Grand Jury Award, Chicago International Film
Festival's Silver Hugo Award), NOT OF THIS WORLD is
a superbly acted, bittersweet comedy that richly deserves
its recognition.
Giuseppe Piccioni's (PENNILESS HEARTS)
sixth film explores how a single event sets in motion
life-changing human interactions between three seemingly
unrelated people - Caterina, a novice nun, Ernesto,
a lonely Laundromat owner and Teresa, a despairing unwed
mother. Caterina (wonderfully played by Piccioni regular
Margherita Buy, ALL THE LOVE THERE IS), 11 months from
taking her vows, discovers an abandoned baby in the
park and relinquishes the unwanted waif to the authorities.
However, Catrina experiences the surfacing of powerful
maternal feelings for the lost baby and becomes obsessed
with finding the child's mother.
Following a clue provided by a cleaner's
tag on the baby's blanket, she finds the reluctant and
unmarried Ernesto (played by Peter Sellers look-alike
Silvio Orlando, APRILE) who finally admits to being
the father. The unlikely couple, Caterina whose feeling
for the baby is causing to reconsider her vows and Ernesto
who has cut himself off from intimate relationships,
join forces in a complex search for the baby's elusive
mother. Nothing is completely straightforward in this
much praised and unpredictable film as, along the way,
Ernesto and Caterina come face-to-face with their own
neuroses and crises of faith. Buy and Orlando
in the leads are, by turns, luminous and funny in this
rewarding tale, told with gentle humour and affection.
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