Synopsis
Rome, 1984, Aria is nine-year-old girl. On the verge of divorce, Aria's infantile and selfish parents are too preoccupied with their careers and extra-marital affairs to properly tend to any of Aria's needs. While her two older sisters are pampered, Aria is treated with cold indifference. Yet she yearns to love and to be loved. At school, Aria excels academically but is considered a misfit by everyone. She is misunderstood. Aria finds comfort in her cat - Dac and in her best friend - Angelica. Thrown out of both parents' homes, abandoned by all, even her best friend, Aria finally reaches the limit of what she can bear. She makes an unexpected decision in her life.
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Cast
- Giulia SalernoAria
- Charlotte GainsbourgMadre
- Gabriel GarkoPadre
- Carolina PoccioniLucrezia
- Anna Lou CastoldiDonatina
- Alice PeaAngelica
- Andrea PittorinoAdriano
- Sofia PatronMaria Teresa
- Riccardo RussoCiccio
- Olimpia Carlisinonna
Recommendations
- 88
RogerEbert.com
The result is an occasionally strange, occasionally brutal and occasionally lovely work that goes up on the shelf with "The Ocean of Helena Lee" and "Girlhood" as one of the more impressive coming-of-age tales of recent times. - 75
The Playlist
The respect that the film mostly has for Aria’s personhood, even at such a young age, gives it a keener edge than many other entries in the rather overpopulated coming-of-age genre. - 70
Village Voice
Both Aria and the film as a whole are very much in their own head, which is a nice place to visit but probably not the healthiest environment to grow up in. - 70
The Hollywood Reporter
Argento seems to have learned from the experience of her overwrought first features, or maybe from life itself, that there is more to childhood than Gothic horror, and the mischievous moments of being a kid captured in Misunderstood show a filmmaker who is maturing in the direction of audience appeal. - 70
The New York Times
A buoyantly funny, sometimes desperately sad film. - 58
The A.V. Club
The ostensible boldness of Misunderstood is undermined by the sense that it’s also pandering—that its view of childhood as a bourgeois horror-show is at least as salable on the art-house circuit as it is authentic to its creator’s experiences. - 50
Slant Magazine
The film is only slightly dependent on the self-pity that informed Asia Argento's last effort, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, but it feels similarly airless.