User Reviews

While this film adds one of the faces that could easily be overlooked in the saga against the mafia in Sicily, it's just not quite there.

The wide shots are typical of setting the scene in different places but the angles are trite and not not reflecting of other realities. Example: A piazza in a small town at mass with 1 or two families? Where are the other extras?

The script unnaturally plays to the uninformed audience (why would a prosecutor tell a Palermo policeman how far a town is on the island? Why would the same judge inform, on the way to the courtroom, that the defense has the best lawyers? All are items that could have been interlaced better into the story and thus add the real drama that actually played out.

Rita's story deserves to be told and for that the lay audience needs more context but we have lots of real material that could have been unobtrusively added without detracting from the imaginary settings/details.

Of course, the film has particular moments of veracity: the hush attitude, the insolent exchanges with police, the Sicilian's simplicity in honor.

The film fits in a context of other life to art about the Falcone period.

This 2009 Italian film directed by Marco Amenta ably chronicles efforts to significantly curtail the influence of the Sicilian Mafia during the period of 1985 to the early 90s. It's based on the true story of Rita Atria, the teenage daughter of a Mafia don, who testified against the men responsible for his murder, inside a Palermo Court. In the film Atria is named Rita Mancuso. The narrative is divided into halves-the first dealing with Rita's life as a child and later as a teenager, when she decides to testify against various Mafia cohorts.

Miriana Faja plays the young Rita who is treated like a princess by her Mafia boss dad Don Michele (Marcelo Mazzarella). We see Michele through the young Rita's eye. She grows up believing that her father is an "old school" man of honor, who has earned the respect of the Sicilian populace through his "even-handed" handling of disputes. When a landlord kills a peasant and then short-changes workers on a farm, Michele attempts to have him treat the peasants decently. But after being rebuffed, the landlord is viciously killed by unidentified goons. Only later, in the second half, do we discover that Michele ordered the hit and was present for the landlord's execution.

Two events have a profound effect on Rita. The first is the murder of her father when she was 11 years old by a rival Mafia don, Zio Salvo (Mario Pupella) and later the murder of her brother, also by the aforementioned thugs. Rita vows revenge which leads her to turn state's evidence, supported by Palermo prosecutor referred in the film simply as The Prosecutor (played by Gérard Jugnot). Director Amenta chose to cast Jugnot who does not speak a word of Italian (watch the DVD extras to see how he interacted with Veronica D'Agostino who plays the teenage Rita).

The second half of the film is a little less compelling than the first as this involves Rita being placed in a safe house in Rome and testifying at the trial. Two sub-plots involve Rita's deteriorating relationship with her mother (which was always fraught with conflict) as well a dalliance she undertakes with a young man. During this time, Rita experiences an epiphany, realizing that her father was not the saint she believed him to be. Testimony by a woman at the trial who claimed Rita's father raped her, serves to destroy the saintly image of her father she held on to for so long.

The Sicilian Girl features a tragic ending based on real-life events. After the Prosecutor (whose actual name was Paolo Borselino) was murdered via a car bomb, a week later Rita takes her own life by jumping off a balcony. Nonetheless, in a coda, we learn most of the Mafiosi were found guilty at trial and sentenced to long prison sentences.

The Sicilian Girl has a moving score by Pasquale Catalano and feisty acting by the principal played by D'Agostino. Rita Atria's family was nonetheless not happy with the result, claiming those involved were only trying to make a buck. If you know nothing about this subject, it's a film that will certainly educate you in the dark history of the Mafia in Italy.

Having lived in Sicily, this movie had extra relevance for me, especially as it deals with an aspect of the investigations into the Mafia, by magistrates Falcone and Borsellino, and the resulting maxi-trials in Palermo, with which I was not familiar, namely the part played by Rita Atria. I particularly liked the way the role of the mother typifies the see-nothing/say-nothing attitude of the people. This is emphasized in the scene where Rita's mafioso father is murdered by a rival. Windows and shutters are quietly closed and the piazza is deserted save for the corpse. The director also deserves credit for not making Rita a docile, frightened informer; instead she is feisty and she is not slow to tell the police what she thinks of them. It is a beautifully paced movie,with a well-told tale and is, like, "Gomorra" which concerned the Neapolitan Mafia, the Camorra, a movie that makes you angry. Angry at the utter scum who still permeate society in southern Italy and angry at the corruption of public officials who deal with such scum. At least something good has come out of those investigations and trials. There is a grassroots movement in Palermo called "addiopizzo". Young business people who were so shocked by the excesses of the mafia during the period of the investigations and the maxi-trials that they took to the streets, as can be seen in real-life footage at the end of this movie, and declared they were no longer willing to pay the "pizzo" (extortion) money demanded by the Mafia. A gripping and important movie.