2024 / Dir. Valeria Golino / 2024 Chicago International Film Festival
☆ 4/5
Actor-director Valeria Golino’s The Art of Joy is utterly consuming. Not just because it’s 320 minutes long, but because it fashions a world you’ve never quite seen and never want to leave. Adapted from the controversial novel by Goliarda Sapienza, the story follows Modesta, a flawed and free-spirited young woman coming up in early 20th-century Sicily. In our conversation with Golino, she notes that Modesta “has all the characteristics and bad sides of a male character” and it’s precisely this reason that the film works as well as it does. It’s a mirror for a society that rejoices when it’s Joaquin Phoenix wreaking havoc in The Master, but walks away offended when it’s a woman. Don’t get me wrong, the film doesn’t pretend for a second that this character is virtuous, but there is an undeniable allure to watching her respond to her heart with passion and bloody abandon. All in all, it’s a film that adjusts the way you see the world, and isn’t that why we go to the movies?
