Continuing our daily spotlighting of films featured in NYFF52, we present Asia Argento's Misunderstood. The film will have its North American premiere at the festival following its debut in Cannes. Its title is a nod to Luigi Comencini’s 1967 classic Incompreso—also titled Misunderstood in English—but this is an entirely different beast. Argento continues to progress as a filmmaker since her previous releases Scarlet Diva and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, and the pain of those earlier films have transmuted in Misunderstood to black humor, making it more accessible. The film is personal, too. The lead 9-year-old is called Aria (Argento’s original name); Aria’s father is famous in the movie business; and Aria’s parents separate at around the same time in her life that Asia’s did. However despite these similarities to Asia's reality, the tone Argento establishes is more quirky than realist, a kind of heightened filter—reflected in the slightly oversaturated palette—that keeps proceedings gently ironic.
Charlotte Gainsbourg and Gabriel Garko are perfectly cast as the parents, but the best bit of casting is the fabulous Giulia Salerno as Aria, who is shunted back and forth between her separated mother and father, who are not so much cruel as self-centered—which, the director seems to suggest, amounts to the same thing. Jessica Kiang from Indiewire states: “We don't need to be asked to empathize with Aria, we're already there.”
Making a crucial contribution to mood is the choice of colors, costumes, and interiors capturing the spirit of 1984, as well as a far-ranging soundtrack of rock, punk, and Mozart, with some of the songs written by Argento herself as well as her friend Brian Molko from Placebo. Music seems to be one of the few things that brings happiness to Aria's life, as she momentarily finds joy during a night out with her father and his friends from the pop electronic band The Penelopes and, later, with the arrival of Mom's new punk-rocker beau (Justin Pearson).
Misunderstood | Trailer | NYFF52
NYFF52 Original Description
The imaginative life of a preteen girl in Rome in the 1980s is depicted with love and humor by Asia Argento, who grew up in the same place and time under similar showbiz circumstances. All but ignored by her divorced, narcissistic parents and tormented by her more conventional and manipulative siblings, Aria (a marvelous Giulia Salerno) shuttles between the well-appointed digs of her singer mother (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and actor father (Gabriel Garko), carrying her only companion, a large cat who is more affectionate and comfortable in his own skin than any of the humans in her life. A precociously gifted writer, Aria elaborates her cat-accompanied walks into the sometimes life-threatening adventures that mix with mundane actualities. As a projection of young female subjectivity, Misunderstood is ingenious, direct, and utterly real.
