Based on a true story, this dark little film follows Rita Atria’s the doomed journey through the contradictions of the justice system in mafia-bullied Sicily in the early-’90s. The daughter of a local Mafioso lieutenant whose compassion for his poor and exploited countrymen brought him up against the conventions of his own crime “family”, Rita (played by Veronica D’Agostino) is protected from much of the darker side of his life. Perhaps this innocence is why, after she endures the murders of both her brother and father at the hands of local Mafia bosses, she makes the impossible decision to turn to the law to bring the killers to justice.
Subverting the notions of honour and the omnipresent code of silence that envelops the region, Rita Atria pushed for anti-Mafia judge Paolo Borsellino to intervene and haul the murderers — all of whom are well know to everyone to be Mafia figures — in front of the court. Of course, in a community in which corruption is endemic, and in which everyone knows everyone else — her own “uncle” is among the men who had her father killed, for example — not only is she immediately condemned by the murderous bosses for her transgressions, but even her mother calls her a lunatic, washing her hands of the whole affair.
Caught between an abhorrence of violence and the apparent need to confront it, Rita carries a pistol around with her because “it’s all I have of my father”. In this film about family (well, THE family, I suppose), much of the emotional heft is born of the feeling of a community in crisis, a broken and silenced people, afraid, lethargic, and (worst of all) indifferent. This sad, sluggish, and methodical film paints a bleak portrait of a society that has been so cowed by endemic corruption and violence that they have turned inward.
While Rita seems hell-bent on doing “the right thing” by turning to the police and the justice system, her friends and neighbours begin to regard her as one already dead. Indeed, almost immediately a contract is taken out on both her and her judicial protector Borsellino, and the film’s suspense all revolves around the question of their (seemingly inevitable) murders.
As a film, The Sicilian Girl is marred by overly mannered direction and unnecessarily gloomy lighting. It seems impossible that a movie with this much inherent suspense should come across with this little narrative heft or visual pop. We watch, at first fascinated, but eventually quite jaded, as director Marco Amenta allows his scenes to develop too slowly, failing to ramp up the plot.
More frustratingly, the characters remain (most of them, anyway) little more than sketches throughout – motivation is obvious in most cases, but personality is not. We don’t get to know these people so much as watch them as they do things. As a result, though the final few scenes are terrifically dreadful, the middle section is a bit too much of a slog to allow them the impact they richly deserve. Still, Rita Atria’s last days are so disturbing, and her final act so haunting, that even if this might not be the greatest film that could have been made about her life and cause, it retains impressive power. As an astoundingly courageous voice amid the tens of thousands whose tongues were stilled by fear, Rita Atria remains today a folk hero in her homeland.
In Italian – where the original title was La Siciliana Ribelle, or The Rebellious Sicilian Girl – with English subtitles. This DVD comes with no extras at all, which is frustrating, considering the breadth of available (and worthy) material on Rita Atria, Paolo Borsellino, and the Mafia situation in the late-’80s and early-’90s.