TIFF Review: Amanda

Another submission into the “unlikeable girl” canon (my favourite genre), Amanda is a strong debut from writer-director Carolina Cavalli.

Entitled, abrasive, and lost, 25-year-old Amanda, played by Benedetta Porcaroli, has a lot of trouble making friends after moving back to Italy from Paris. Even her own family, with the exception of her eccentric 8-year-old niece, has trouble being around her. But under Amanda’s hard exterior is a very lonely person desperate for love. And her isolation is not for lack of trying. She frequents the local cinematheque, haunts online chatrooms, and wanders around empty raves in search of companionship - to no avail. But things turn around for Amanda when she’s re-united with Rebecca, the daughter of her mother’s good friend after discovering that the two actually had a brief childhood friendship. Yet when Amanda reaches out to to Rebecca only to learn that she’s become an anti-social hermit who never leaves her room, it looks like this chance at companionship might not be so easy to obtain.

What is immediately striking about Amanda is its rather detached, yet playful dialogue. Cavalli’s writing prowess is at the forefront of this film, as she fills it with unusual quips and disarming jokes that makes for a very seamless and exciting viewing experience. Whether its Amanda saying straight-faced to a horse, “you’re so skinny, you look like a table”; or her little niece telling the family that while she is not obsessed with Jesus per se, she does “like him as a person”; or Amanda and her love interest having an argument about whether or saying “I saw a deer on the road” qualifies as a story - the film establishes a tone so unique it practically invents its own genre.

Enjoyable as it is, Amanda does sometimes fall victim to the cutting room issues that befall so many first films. There are certain scenes which serve no real purpose to the narrative other than the demonstrate the quirkiness of the characters - such as Amanda’s mother dancing stiffly by herself in the sitting room, which can feel a bit too self aware. However, Cavalli says that she approaches her writing process “with a desire to have a spinoff for every character”. She neatly unpacks complex ideas, like the absurd formality of a woman refuses sugar in her tea even though she loves sugar, or the diagnosis of mental illness as a self-fulfilling prophecy, in a way that feels true to the lives of her characters. And while these eccentricities can sometimes be redundant and gratuitous, they work to build this rich, off-beat world that Cavalli immerses us in.

The “unlikeable woman” is not an easy character to write. Amanda is often intolerably selfish, cruel, and, very often, wrong. This could be tedious to watch, but Cavalli writes her with such a tenderness and empathy that it doesn’t take long to fall in love with this prickly protagonist. Amanda is a delightful film that merits multiple rewatches. Another A+!