Mark Reviews Movies: ITALIAN STUDIES

Italian Studies, Magnolia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 13, 2022

If writer/director Adam Leon has a point to make with Italian Studies, it's lost amidst the movie's devotion to being intentionally aimless, meandering, and fractured. To be sure, Leon captures a certain sense of loneliness, fear, and trying to find some purpose in each specific moment of life, but that atmosphere of dread and uncertainty only takes material as shallow as this so far.

It all begins in London, as author Alina Reynolds (Vanessa Kirby, admirably sympathetic as an empty shell of a character) meets up with her husband (played by David Ajala) and goes to a party. There, she encounters a young woman (played by Annika Wahlsten) who recognizes Alina—not from her writing, but from a different party, sometime in the past and in New York City. Alina doesn't remember the stranger who claims to have met her, but the mention of the name Simon brings back memories of a very strange day in Alina's life.

The rest of the story plays out in flashback and also in imagination, in other memories, or in re-creations of one of Alina's short stories. We're never exactly sure if what's happening to Alina is real, a fantasy, or some kind of transference of her experience to a character from one of her works—or vice versa. Leon plays with our understanding of the protagonist's perspective and awareness in some occasionally tantalizing ways. As for what any of that means for the character or the story in general, that's anybody's guess.

Within the extended flashback, the gimmick here is that Alina, walking her cute dog, loses her memory while shopping at a hardware store (There's almost certainly a good chance people will be more concerned about the dog than the main character, and that worry only grows as Alina's purpose in her own story becomes even more difficult to ascertain). She spends most of her time wandering the streets—down the sidewalks, through an outdoor market, to some other shops, a stoop, a rather spacious abandoned space, and other generic locales (Brett Jutkiewicz's handheld cinematography, which only makes use of available light in any of these spaces, does provide an almost otherworldly feel to things, while also making us wonder how much of this was staged and how much was improvised).

Unaware of who she is or what she's supposed to be doing, Alina is driven by two things: her physical needs (eating—by shoplifting—and using the bathroom—in that spaciously dingy space—and sleeping—in the stairwell of a random apartment building) and making connections with other people. The main focus of those connections is Simon (Simon Brickner), a teenager who likes hot dogs and marijuana, is in love with a girl who's about to go away to college, and takes Alina to meet some of his other friends.

That's basically the extent of the story here, as Alina roams, seems to forget herself over and over again, and keeps returning to Simon, his friends, and, once she discovers she's an author, the short story collection she wrote (The movie's title refers to the title of that compilation, if it matters—which it probably does for some reason or another). At least one of those stories, in which a young journalist (played by Maya Hawke) starts hanging out with teenagers and becomes obsessed with finding a singer, kind of mirrors Alina's own quest for finding meaning in her wanderings. Is she remembering the story, imagining herself living it, or just part of some kind of cosmic coincidence of art imitating life? If Leon knows, he keeps mum on the mystery.

Some one-on-one interviews with Simon and his pals, in which they talk about their lives in vague details, are either something Alina starts doing or part of that story. At some other point, Alina decides that Simon will be the protagonist of her new novel—or maybe he and this whole adventure already are part of that book.

Who knows? How's the puppy holding up through all of this, anyway? We have to hope the dog found a nice person to care for it, while Alina has a real or metaphorical crisis of memory. Italian Studies does answer that question (in a thankfully positive way), at least. As for the movie in general, it reveals little about Alina, about these teens, about memory, about isolated survival and making connections out of necessity, or about much of anything at all, really.

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