Vittoria

Filmmaking duo Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman continue their success in crafting authentic and heartfelt drama from real-life situations with Vittoria. The third of their films to be shot against the working class backdrop of the Neapolitan port city of Torre Annunziata, each film has spawned the next. Coming-of-age docudrama hybrid Californie, centred on Khadija Jaafari, who the pair had met shooting their documentary Butterfly, and it also featured the non-professional star of this film Marilena Amato in a supporting role.

Amato plays Jasmine - in a verite story that both features and is structured around the real experiences of her and her family. A hairdresser with a penchant for leopard print and brassy attitude to life, she also has a busy homelife with her carpenter husband Rino (Gennaro Scarica) and three sons, with the oldest Vincenzo (Vincenzo Scarica) at something of a crossroads as he mulls following his mother into the hairdressing business. His desires may not be immediately clear but Jasmine has just a single one - that of having a daughter.

A film that is driven by Jasmine’s determination - and all the more compelling because of it - her attempts to navigate both family politics and external bureaucracy in a bid to adopt form the arc of the film. Although there are one or two moments of fireworks that drift towards the melodramatic - not particularly surprising given that these are non-professional actors who are being asked to dip into their own lives - for the most part is a measured exploration of the ties that bind.

While there’s no doubt that relationships can get you into a knot, especially when it comes to affairs of the heart that also have a hefty fiscal price, those same ties offer a security and something that can hold you together when things threaten to come apart. Cassigoli and Kauffman capture the muscle of family life as it bends, stretches and, from time to time strains, to accommodate all of its members, all supported by a lyrical piano-driven score from Giorgio Giampà.

While it’s not so much of a character as in Californie, the directors also capture the flavour of the wider backdrop of Torre Annunziata. A place in the shadow of Vesuvius, the local steel plant has also cast a lingering cloud over those who worked there, the results of which also lead families to internal moral debate. The unassuming air of the drama in the first half of the film may feel somewhat drifting at the time but the impact of the emotional slam dunk that comes later is charged by everything that has gone before. Family is both a work in progress and what you make it.