'The Choir Girl', an intense portrait of adolescence

Fresh from an award-winning short film "Granny's Sexual Life", the Slovenian director here explores the territory of adolescence, reflecting on the theme of sexuality and the dynamics of social rules.

Opening with a beautiful sequence, 'The Girl from the Choir' starts off strong in depicting precisely the protagonist's difficult integration with her surroundings: the camera is perpetually attached to her, so as to be able to capture all her emotions and also her changes of expression depending on the situation she is experiencing.

The plot of 'The Girl from the Choir' undoubtedly smacks of something already seen, but in this debut there is a freshness and spontaneity that can largely hide the limitations of a script that plays with a few stereotypes.

What emerges is an effective female coming-of-age story, perhaps lacking a great directing idea, but nonetheless capable of delivering truly powerful sequences: see also the powerful finale, which leaves more than one food for thought at the end of the credits.

The lead actress Jara Sofija Ostan is very good, effective in giving credibility to a character that is not easy to play: attracted by sexuality, but also fearful of it, Lucia is a figure with whom one can empathise and who is able to trigger in the spectator all the questions she begins to ask herself.

Far less intense is 'Three Bowls', the new film by Isabel Coixet, an adaptation of Michela Murgia's latest collection of short stories.

The protagonists are Alba Rohrwacher and Elio Germano, respectively playing Marta and Antonio, a couple who break up after spending several years together. Each reacts to the break-up in a different way: Marta closes in on herself while Antonio throws himself completely into his work. Despite the fact that he is the one who left her, however, he cannot get over her.

The basis drawn from Michela Murgia's text is important and interesting, but the film collapses into a series of clichés that end up making one lose involvement with the story being told.

As in practically every film of her career, Isabel Coixet demonstrates that she lacks a delicate hand and lapses into the easiest and crudest rhetoric: see also her previous films such as 'The Secret Life of Words' or 'Elisa y Marcela'.

Rohrwacher and Germano act with the right commitment, but their work is not enough to save this product from a mediocrity into which it enters very early and from which it can no longer emerge.