Pizzicata

It's 1943 in Italy and an impoverished family finds their peaceful rural existence suddenly disrupted by the arrival of American fighter pilot Tony (Fabio Frascaro), who was shot down near their village. The handsome youth, an Italian immigrant originally from a village not far from their own, is taken in by the family and hidden from the authorities, and he soon falls hard for both their peasant lifestyle and their daughter Cosima (Chiara Torelli). But Cosima's father has already promised her to a local, and when Tony runs afoul of the impatient suitor, the star-crossed lovers find their time in the Tuscan sun very brief. Pizzicata, whose title comes from the words for joyous ("pizzica") and deadly ("tarantata") dances, is a richly woven, lovingly lensed and enormously evocative film, punctuated with the wonderful folk music and dances of first time writer-director Edoardo Winspeare's native land. While the performances are uniformly strong, the film owes much of its impact to the screen presence (and haunting beauty) of Torelli as Cosima, an actress who exudes such an effortless sensuousness that she could bring down enemy planes on her own. A lyrical gem. Highly recommended. (S. C. Sickles)