Director – Damiano Michieletto – 2025 – Italy, France – Cert. 15 – 110m
*****
A young Venetian orphan comes into her own learning to play the violin under her orphanage’s new Master of Music, Antonio Vivaldi – period drama is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, April 24th
A group of girls, all wearing similar dresses, fawn over a cat’s newly birthed litter of kittens. That doesn’t last long, as an older woman unceremoniously picks up the kittens one by one, stuffs them into a sack, goes to the huge wooden door of the courtyard, opens it, and throws the sack into the canal. In seconds we have gone from unbearably cute to unspeakably cruel.
The older woman is the Prioress (Fabrizia Sacchi) who presides over an orphanage in eighteenth century Venice. Baby girls are abandoned outside their doors, accompanied by half a memento – should the woman later wish to reclaim her daughter, she need only turn up at the orphanage bearing the matching half. The orphanage’s archive lists the details of every girl, complete with half memento. Many of the mementos are religious, such as an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The orphanage is renowned for its orchestra.… Read the rest
