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A Chiara

2021

Jonas Carpignano

Swamy Rotolo, Carmela Fumo, Claudio Rotolo, Rosa Caccamo ...

6.3

787

Drama The Guerrasio family and their friends gather to celebrate Claudio and Carmela’s oldest daughter’s 18th birthday. There is a healthy rivalry between the birthday girl and her 16-year-old sister Chiara, as they compete on the dancefloor. It is a happy occasion, and the close-knit family is in top form. However, everything changes the next day when Claudio disappears. Chiara starts to investigate; as she gets closer to the truth, she is ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	David Rooney The Hollywood Reporter	"The rambunctious picture of family life that opens the film is instantly engaging even if you’re not sure at first where it’s headed"	POS
United States	Diego Semerene Slant	"Swamy Rotolo’s face is rife with the ambiguities that the film’s narrative lacks once it pivots into thriller mode (…) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"	NEU
United States	Jay Weissberg Variety	"Tim Curtin’s dynamic camera is attuned to Chiara’s teenage energy without going overboard"	POS
United States	Ed Frankl The Film Stage	"There’s so much naturalism to Carpignano’s direction that it’s easy to imagine this might be some reconstruction of real events (...) 'A Chiara' is told in a wonderfully fluid and poetic fashion"	POS
United States	David Ehrlich IndieWire	"However uncertain we may be about who Chiara is or ultimately decides to become, Carpignano's trilogy has made it powerfully clear just how far that decision will resonate"	NEU
United Kingdom	Lee Marshall Screendaily	"The intensity of Swamy Rotolo’s central performance and the story’s fiery commitment to her character sweep most of [its] quibbles aside"	POS
United States	Simon Abrams rogerebert.com	"Carpignano's impressionistic plot and pseudo-naturalistic style also tends to boil down human emotions so as to only suggest rather than reveal complexity (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"	NEU
United States	Charles Bramesco The Playlist	"[Carpignano] is not quite deconstructing the gangster picture, but he succeeds in draining all its allure"	POS
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"Gripping and unnerving drama (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Katie Walsh The Wrap	"An ambitious genre-melter rendered in his observational, lyrical style (...) Carpignano manages to flip the Mafia movie on its head, and in doing so, challenges the mythology that keeps these shadowy systems in power"	POS
United States	Leigh Monson AV Club	"Though the path to its conclusions is at times more plodding than meditative, the finale is a subtle, emotional twist of the knife that makes the journey worth taking"	NEU
United States	Marshall Shaffer Decider	"While Swamy Rotolo can light up the frame with her insistent inquisition, her dynamic presence alone is not enough to hold attention for two hours"	NEG
United States	Robert Abele Los Angeles Times	"There [are] poetic touches to the handheld cinematography, music choices and sound design that feel like externalizations of Chiara's inner life (...) What's best about 'A Chiara' is its totality of naturalism and subjectivity"	POS
	Camillo de Marco Cineuropa	"'A Chiara' demonstrates more work on the writing, with a greater awareness of social (and legal) issues"	POS

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