Adua and Her Friends

Warm, jazzy and tragic, this is a very well put-together drama about the difficulty of trying to improve one's circumstances in a cold-hearted universe not predisposed to allow it. Strange and moving for this viewer to see Emmanuelle Riva here at about age 32, perhaps the most beautiful of the four actresses, a couple of days after having rewatched AMOUR (2012). Mastroianni would have been 35 when this was filmed: Luciana Gilli, who plays his girlfriend (of sorts), must have been 15.

Star Rating: ★★★

A superb Italian Neorealist film, with all the best qualities of the movement. Naturalistic situations form a sophisticated narrative, full of insight and emotionally hard-hitting, great atmosphere and music, and uniformly masterful acting from everyone from Signoret and Mastroianni to the smallest roles.

"A neglected gem from one of Italian cinema's greatest talents."

Adua and her "colleagues" are on their own after their brothel is outlawed. As they struggle to learn a new way of living, they find that society keeps pressuring them to return to their old ways. I haven't been too thrilled with Signoret, but this is a role she was born to play, brassy and bold. The film manages to be quite entertaining, a relative rarity in neo-realism. The jazzy score helps, as does the fine camerawork, but it's really the characters and performances that keep it compelling.