Product Description

A coming of age story about a 15-year-old provincial girl who moves to Rome and finds her new tony private school is a microcosm of the cultural and political divisions of Italian society When her parents, Giancarlo (Sergio Castellitto) and Agata (Margherita Buy), move from a seaside town in Tuscany to an ailing aunt's apartment in the big city, Caterina (Alice Teghil) is ready for something new. Dad, a teacher in a tech school, has undisguised social ambitions and is delighted to see a list of famous last names attending Caterina's new school. Her class is split between revolutionary no-globals and rich kids who parrot their parents' conservative ideas. Both sides try to bring the new girl into their sphere of influence. She's first drawn to Margherita (Carolina Iaquaniello), a mercurial hippie princess whose mom (Galatea Ranzi) is a politically active intellectual. This first phase of Caterina's social education ends when Margherita gets her drunk and tattoos her arm. Giancarlo arrives, intending to get Margherita's mother to find a publisher for his novel, which he has given her daughter to read. Abruptly switching from fawning to outraged, he insults everyone before dragging the vomiting Caterina home. Caterina soon falls in with the flighty Daniela (Federica Sbrenna) and her circle of rich, cell phone totting mall-rats. After making her over into an urban sophisticate, they introduce her to a quiet young aristocrat with a disapproving mother and to Daniela's father, a right-wing undersecretary (Claudio Amendola) in Berlosconni’s government. As her parent’s marriage disintegrates in the face of her father’s social frustrations, Catherina finds comfort in her extended family and hope for the future in a budding romance (and perhaps the prospect of emigration someday) with a boy from Australia. The film lays bare Italy’s great political divide and absence of middle ground, a situation some US viewers may recognize uncomfortably close to home.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52518 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-11-29
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
• Original language: Italian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 106 minutes

Review
A smarter, realer, and far more interesting version of Mean Girls --SF Weekly

Review
Bold, richly textured, and entertaining. --The New York Times

Customer Reviews

Nothing profound, but full of life!
"Caterina in the Big City" is a lively, quirky movie, similar in tone to something like "Amelie." Like "Amelie," it is about something very small (in this case, a girl moves to Rome and learns life lessons and such) but somehow feels bigger-than-life. The actress who plays Caterina does a wonderful job and the other kids in the movie are outstanding. There's a nice bit of politics, human nature, romance, and more than a bit of comedy.

Very entertaining!

Better than average movie
I really enjoyed this film. Caterina is a country girl who moves to Rome with her parents. Her father is a teacher who has a grandiose vision of himself as a great writer (his work reads like a cheap paperback). Her mother is kind and pretty but a bit of an airhead. Caterina is trying to fit in at school. Does she belong with the Bohemians or with the rich socialites (think teenage Paris Hilton)?

It's a charming coming of age movie. I couldn't help but think that Italy has the same social and political divide as we do in America. I found it amusing some classmates called her a "Hillbilly". Back in Detroit in the '70s I knew a Sicilian who called himself an "Italian Hillbilly". I thought it was kind of funny but I bet he was called that as a kid. I think anyone who remembers being a teen will like this flick.

Great movie...accurate portrayal of Roma
A good movie and since I just returned from a year in Italy, I can say that this film accurately portrays the style, language, and politics that define Roma. The subtitled translations are not that great, but if you don't speak Italian you would never notice and it doesn't contribute to anything being missed or lost within the plot or anything. I highly recommend this film