PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Caterina in the City (Caterina va in Città) (2003)

Caterina in the City (Caterina va in Città) (2003)

If you create a user account, you can add your own review of this DVD
Released 15-Nov-2005
Cover Art

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

Details At A Glance

General		Extras
Category	Coming-Of-Age	None
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	103:21
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu	Cast & Crew
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Paolo Virzì
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Alice Teghil Sergio Castellitto Margherita Buy Antonio Carnevale Silvio Vannucci Federica Sbrenna Carolina Iaquaniello Zach Wallen Martino Reviglio Claudio Amendola Flavio Bucci Paola Tiziana Cruciani Luigi Grilli
Case	?	Starring
RPI	Box	Music	Carlo Virzì

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.40:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No	Miscellaneous
Subtitles	English (Burned In)	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

This film is the second of eleven films in the Italian Film Festival 2004 box set. The films are very different and the only real link between them is that they were all made in Italy in the last couple of years. This one shares the second disc of the collection with After Midnight.

This film is a coming-of-age drama about a young girl, Caterina (Alice Teghil) who moves from a rural village into Rome with her mother and father. They move into the neighbourhood where her intellectual school teacher father, Giancarlo (Sergio Castellitto) grew up. Also along for the ride is her befuddled mother, Agata (Margherita Buy). Her father signs her up for the school he used to attend and she is immediately completely out of her depth, quickly trying to come to terms with the strong political feelings amongst her classmates. They seem to fall into either a group of strongly left leaning hippies and intellectuals or the right leaning 'smart set'. She is torn between the two groups as they both try to get her to join them for very different reasons. As the film continues her allegiances change back and forth and she realises she needs to be true to herself rather than one clique or the other.

Basically, this film is teenage angst, Italian style and I did not really warm to it. There's nothing terribly wrong with it, however, the plot is fairly predictable and really doesn't go anywhere. I have seen much better coming-of-age films such as Secondhand Lions.

Luckily, there are much better films in this set.

Don't wish to see plot synopses in the future? Change your configuration.

Transfer Quality

Video

The video quality is unsatisfactory, especially in regards to the subtitles.

The feature is presented in a 2.40:1 aspect ratio 16x9 enhanced which is close to the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1.

The picture was fairly soft, with no evidence of low level noise. Shadow detail was poor.

The colour was dull and lifeless. It also seemed slightly overbright which resulted in light colour bleeding including the burned in white subtitles.

Artefacts included quite a lot of film artefacts including hairs and white specks, aliasing such as on shutters at 9:14 and a door at 14:48 and jagged edges.

There are burned-in subtitles in English which in addition to the bleeding problem mentioned above were often badly placed on the screen meaning they were unreadable due to a white section of the screen. If that wasn't enough, during the credits the subtitles often disappeared off the side of the screen, meaning you only got part of the line. Just not good enough!

*Video Ratings Summary*
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

The audio quality is decent but mono.

This DVD contains an Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 mono soundtrack encoded at 224 Kb/s.

Dialogue seemed clear and there was no problem with audio sync that my very limited knowledge of Italian allowed me to detect.

The surround speakers and subwoofer were not used.

*Audio Ratings Summary*
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

None.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

This movie has been released on DVD in Italy and as far as I can make out using Google translator it contains some extras such as a behind the scenes doco and interviews. It does not contains English subtitles but does have a 5.1 track. If you can speak Italian, that is the best version, however, I'll assume most of the local audience can't and give this comparison to Region 4.

Summary

An uninteresting Italian coming-of-age film.