The tyranny of popular culture and especially the fashion industry has made thinness the ideal standard of feminine beauty. Women all over the world measure themselves against a look that is often unrealistic and even dangerously unhealthy. Men still turn their heads when a fashionably thin young woman passes. Both sexes have been brain-washed and show no signs of giving up their allegiance to this fantasy of beauty. This intense Italian psychodrama is written and directed by Matteo Garrone who claims it is based on true events. A man and a woman enter into a strange relationship that gives him total power to mold her to his idea of feminine beauty.
In the opening scene, Vittorio (Vitaliano Trevisan), an accomplished goldsmith, meets Sonia (Michela Cescon) at a bus depot. She has responded to his classified ad. She is somewhat nervous and trying hard to be friendly. However, the positive energy between the two of them is shattered when she asks him if he is satisfied with her appearance. He says he thought she would be thinner. This moment sets the stage for all that follows. He looks at her with a critical eye, and she squirms under his disapproving gaze. Sonia wants to flee, and she succeeds in breaking off the date and going home.
A while later, Vittorio mysteriously appears at an art studio where Sonia is a nude model. He moves through the room taking in every inch of her body. They have sex and soon are in a relationship with each other. Although she only weighs 125 pounds, he wants her to go on a strict diet. Just as in his profession he completely controls the gold he works with, he now wants to mold Sonia into his image of the perfect woman. He is convinced that the essence of life is the process of cutting away inessentials; what is left is what really counts. They move to a new country house in the Veneto hills, and he slights his work. His salesman criticizes him for not delivering things on time. Eventually the two men who work for him quit; they find that he is only a pale shadow of his father who started the business.
The isolation of Vittorio and Sonia from others only worsens her physical and psychological debilitation. She becomes desperate to please him, and her self-disgust grows as she becomes more and more submissive. When he takes her shopping for a new dress, she breaks down in the dressing room after squeezing into a tight-fitting black dress that he fancies. They go dancing, but she falls to the floor in exhaustion. She has no energy after following the starvation routine he demands. Her desperation is evident at a restaurant when she rushes into the kitchen and stuffs mashed potatoes into her mouth after only nibbling at her salad at the table.
Vittorio claims that she is almost where he wants her to be but Sonia knows better. Her subservience to his will has made their relationship into a nightmarish struggle between slave and master. This is a powerful exploration of the shadow side of sexual politics where men think they can control women like objects. It is also a depressing expose on the shadow side of beauty, when warped societal standards cause women to make themselves over at the expense of their health and their dignity.
Screened at the 34th New Directors/New Films Festival, New York City, April 2005
