Monica Bellucci Steals Scenes in Tortorici's 'Ketticè'
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- Giovanni Tortorici directed 'Ketticè,' his second feature after debut 'Diciannove,' with Luca Guadagnino serving as mentor and producer.
- Monica Bellucci plays Vittoria, the caricatured bourgeois mother of protagonist Giulio, in a supporting role the reviewer calls the film's most vivid performance.
- The story follows Giulio (Salvatore Gallina), a 16-year-old Palermo rich kid in 2012 on the verge of failing most subjects, living in a family palazzo and attending private school.
- Giulio becomes fascinated by Ketty (Rachele Testagrossa), a working-class Palermo girl from the Bonagia district known for provoking catfights, and spends €20 daily on cigarettes from a dealer near a Padre Pio statue.
- The film uses playful visual grammar — slow-motion pans, a low camera angle that makes Giulio look grown-up after kissing his girlfriend, then eye-level after a breakup text.
- Oumeima El Khalil's Lebanese vocals provide the soundtrack, which the reviewer compares to Guadagnino-style soundtracks for its evocative dissociation from the Sicilian setting.
- The reviewer flags a built-in sniggering toward Ketty's working-class crowd not present with the private school kids, acknowledging the shallower depiction of working-class characters.
Why it matters: For followers of Italian cinema, the review positions Tortorici as a Guadagnino protégé consolidating his debut's promise with noticeably sharper visual storytelling, while giving Bellucci a long-overdue role that lets her campy irony finally breathe. The film's casual class stereotyping, the reviewer concedes, is the one note that undercuts an otherwise incisive portrait of adolescent boredom.
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