Traveling Companion

A road movie has every right to meander, but few do so quite so unabashedly as this cheerfully arbitrary 1996 entry from Peter Del Monte. Asia Argento justifiably won the Italian best actress honors for her performance as Cora, a sharp-tongued girl hired by one of her dog-walking customers to follow the woman's father, a retired professor with a touch of dementia, on his ramblings. The job takes Cora on a journey through Italy, but the trip doesn't follow the predictable trajectory to an easy friendship; instead it compels her to confront her own memories, longings, and failings. There are numerous detours along the way, as coincidences abound and extraneous characters momentarily take the spotlight, only to abruptly disappear, and the mood shifts regularly as well, with some rather sour episodes alternating with more gently comic ones. In fact, there's not a great deal of narrative or tonal coherence to Traveling Companion, but its wayward charm gradually wins one over, and in addition to Argento it features a heartwarming turn by veteran Michel Piccoli as the befuddled professor; the final exchange between them has a touch of cinematic radiance. Recommended. (F. Swietek)