English Title: Misunderstood
Wildside
Starring: Giulia Salerno, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Gabriel Garko
Directed by: Asia Argento
Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!
Synopsis: Aria (Giulia Salerno) is a nine year old girl living in Rome in the 1980’s when her juvenile, self-centered parents decide to divorce, shuffling Aria between them heartlessly as they pursue their own selfish interests.
Kitty Cameo: From the beginning of the film Aria expresses her desire to have a cat, but her mother flatly refuses. When Aria visits her father’s apartment where her oldest sister Lucrezia (Carolina Poccioni) is living, she finds her sister owns a pretty cream-colored cat named Le Bon (after singer Simon Le Bon).
Le Bon is only seen a couple of times in the film inside Lucrezia’s blindingly pink bedroom.
Featured Feline: Shortly after arriving to live with her father and Lucrezia, Aria is coming home when she spots a black cat running in the street.
She pulls the cat from beneath a parked car where he is hiding and hugs him, taking it home.
She calls the cat Dac, the name she’s picked out for her cat from the beginning. She shows Dac to her sister who says their father will never let her keep it.
When her father arrives, he panics at first. He is a superstitious actor and thinks the black cat will bring him bad luck.
Somehow despite both parents misgivings, Aria is able to keep Dac. But sadly she is continuously shuffled between her parents, and so most of the time Dac is seen in a cage being carried from one location to another by Aria.
Sometimes neither parent wants her and so she has to stay on the streets with Dac.
Dac is the only friend Aria has and she writes essays about him, even winning a competition at school with her work.
The cat actor playing Dac often looks very uncomfortable with the way Aria handles him, swishing his tail in anger.
Aria’s father continues to be nervous about Dac and has a fit when he catches the cat sitting on the script of the movie he has tried so hard to get.
At the end of the film there is a quick scene in which a woman is feeding Dac some meat and comments, “Now you will stop meowing.” Does she mean Dac won’t meow because he won’t be hungry? Or does it have a more sinister meaning?
It’s interesting to note that director Asia Argento is the daughter of famous horror director Dario Argento who also used black cats in some of his films.
Final Mewsings: Cats and children don’t deserve to live with such disfunctional humans.
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