Luchino Visconti's Bellissima is many things, but it is not a comedy. I'm not sure if it's a satire, either. I say this because I have seen both words used repeatedly to describe this film about a maniacal mother who go to great lengths to make her 5-year-old daughter stand out during auditions for a film role. If this is a comedy, then why are there so many shots of the child alone and crying? If it is a satire, why does it feel more like a condemnation of the mother than of the industry she traumatizes her child over? I certainly felt fury during the justifiably famous scene where the mother watches a room full of executives laugh at her daughter's disastrous screen test. But I slowly felt my anger redirect itself from the cruel executives towards the mother forcing her daughter to WATCH the executives mock footage of her crying and shrieking for the screen test to end. Bellissima is a wildly uneven film. If it had focused its energies on depicting the mother as a monster, it might have been better. But it can't seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be light-hearted, serious, funny, or tragic. Of course, a great film can be all of these things simultaneously. But Bellissima isn't one of them. This incongruity doesn't seem deliberate, it seems the natural result of a film with no clear destination in mind.
6/10
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