NYFF Report: 'Misunderstood' Is an Unsentimental Coming-Of-Age Story With a Luminous Young Star
Giulia Salerno delivers a captivating performance in Asia Argento’s semi-autobiographical drama ‘Misunderstood’
When your life story is as eventful as Asia Argento’s, it’s no wonder that you’d want to regularly mine it for inspiration. The 39-year-old daughter of Italian horror maestro Dario Argento and actress Daria Nicolodi, grew up in a tumultuous household, and demonstrated, at the tender age of 8, a vibrant creative streak by publishing a book of poetry. Since then, she’s been a movie star in her native country and abroad (her big Hollywood debut was playing Vin Diesel’s love interest in 2002’s XXX), as well as a novelist, a singer and a model. In 2000, she added “feature filmmaker” to her resume by writing and directing the drama Scarlet Diva, in which she also starred,as…a wild-child actress who decides to become a film director. Like they say, direct what you know.
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With her latest film, Misunderstood, Argento reaches further back into her past, loosely recreating her childhood in ’80s-era Italy. Rather than employ Benjamin Button-technology to portray herself as an adolescent girl, she chose to cast talented young star Giulia Salerno as “Aria” (Argento’s birth name), a precocious nine-year-old who is routinely underappreciated and outright ignored by the rest of her family. Early on, her vainglorious move star father (Gabriel Garko) ups and leaves her hedonistic mother (Charlotte Gainsbourg), taking her wicked elder stepsister with him; while her other, slightly nicer sibling remains with Mom. As usual, Aria is the odd one out, sent back and forth between the two houses whenever one parent decides they’re tired of having her around. Small wonder that she starts hanging out with teenage riff-raff; at least they pay some attention to her.
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Obviously, Argento is exaggerating some of the details of her life for the purposes of fiction. But the emotions the movie touches on feel entirely authentic. Misunderstood vividly captures the experience of being an adolescent outcast, where the big, wide world seems out to thwart you at every turn. Argento has also found an ideal muse in Salerno, who has a screen presence that’s sweetly compelling, without ever turning cloying. Here’s a thought: maybe the director and her star could reunite every year, over the next decade, to record Aria’s continuing adventures, derived from Asia’s own experiences. Based on this movie, they’d be the ideal combo to make the female answer to Boyhood.
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Photo credit: New York Film Festival
