Like Crazy, 2016
Beatrice (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and Donatella (Micaela Ramazzotti) are both inmates at a psychiatric facility. One day on a short release to a plant nursery, the two women impulsively flee, first boarding a bus and then stealing a car. Beatrice is eager to reclaim some of the perks of her aristocratic former life, while Donatella wants to find the child who was taken away from her after a mental health crisis.
This film is billed as a comedy drama, and the promotion of it leans far more heavily on the comedy aspect. Unfortunately, this framing leads to some tonal inconsistencies that make the film an uneven experience.
It's tempting to talk about the film in two halves: the comedy and the drama.
Donatella's story is tragic and interesting. She had an affair with a married man, who then discarded her when she became pregnant. For most of the film we know that she was committed in part because she tried to kill herself and her infant son, though the specifics are withheld until the final act. Clearly not stable enough to be a parent--or maybe even to be around her child--but also clearly suffering at being separated from him, Donatella's quest to track down her child is the kind of subplot where you at once root for her success and for her failure.
I was mixed on the film's portrayal of the people in charge of the facility. While I agree with the idea of being compassionate, the fact that they even debate whether or not to notify the child's adoptive parents that the woman
who tried to kill the child is on the loose seemed horrifically unethical to me.
The comedy stuff? Oof, it mostly didn't work for me. And that's nothing against Bruni Tedeschi, who does a great job portraying a woman who has internalized to the point of instinct the language of the upper class and is able to wield it, like a weapon, in pursuit of what she wants. But the thing about Beatrice is . . . she is terrible. Like, really terrible. There are multiple times where she is overtly racist and homophobic, once singling out a Black family to loudly declare as being "clearly unemployed". "Tee-hee!" the film seems to suggest with the score and framing of these scenes, "What a character!".
There is also some general humor wrung from the other patients at the facility, and this kind of laughing at (not with) people with mental illness just never sits right with me.
If it were possible to cleave the comedy out of this film, I think I would have really enjoyed it. Donatella's story--and even Beatrice's attempts to help on her behalf--is compelling and resolves in a satisfying (if a bit unbelievable) fashion.
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