Nun Enters a ‘World’ of Self-Doubt

Giuseppe Piccioni’s “Not of This World” possesses a seductive warmth and passion and a lyrical style that are in the finest tradition of the Italian cinema.

In 1956 Anna Magnani triumphed in “The Awakening” as a nun who encounters an abandoned baby who triggers in her unexpected and overpowering maternal feelings. Piccioni’s Caterina (Margherita Buy) experiences the very same fate, but the two actresses, the women they play and the films themselves are as different as they are similar. The middle-aged Sister Letizia allowed Magnani to draw upon those volcanic passions that were her trademark and which few actresses have the presence and power to sustain.

Caterina is a much younger, more attractive woman with a far calmer temperament, and Buy takes an interior, understated approach that ultimately is just as memorable as that of Magnani. What’s more, this prize-laden film is also as much the story of Ernesto (Silvio Orlando), a 40ish, stocky workaholic bachelor who becomes involved with the life of Caterina and the baby. Caterina and Ernesto are equally compelling individuals because Piccioni and his co-writers let us learn about them as they learn about themselves. “Not of this World’s” continual sense of discovery and revelation, expressed with subtlety and grace, humor and compassion, is its shining accomplishment.

Caterina has but 11 months to go before taking her final vows when a distraught man in jogging clothes thrusts an abandoned baby boy into her arms as she walks through a park in Milan. He’s just found the child but must unload him on her because he’s on probation and fears having to explain the discovery to authorities. Caterina swiftly takes the baby to a hospital--but she can’t just leave him.

Not only does she visit him regularly but also becomes determined to track down the child’s mother, working only from a man’s sweater in which the baby was wrapped. It has a cleaner’s tag that takes her to the busy cleaning and laundry establishment of Ernesto, who at first is reluctant to become involved, only to admit eventually that he could be the baby’s father as a result of a brief encounter with a former employee, Teresa (Carolina Freschi), a pretty 20-year-old drifter, estranged from her parents and living hand to mouth.

Caterina and Ernesto, without fully realizing it at the start, have embarked on a classic odyssey of self-discovery that will transform their views of life and of themselves. At the same time, we sense that, as profound an effect as this quest will surely have on both of them, it’s unclear whether it will ultimately alter their destinies. Piccioni captivates us with these two people whom many might regard as having been “not of this world” in their detachment and solitary states, and also raises the eternal questions of the meaning of life, of how it should be lived and the role of the spiritual in it.

Indeed, the crisis, as emotion-charged as it is, that Caterina experiences is not one of faith but of vocation, and the film takes place on a spiritual plane that transcends dogma. Caterina is not in conflict with the church and its teachings but with herself as to what role is finally truest for her, mother or nun. In short, there is no way of guessing whether Caterina will end up with the baby--or for that matter, with Ernesto or both. Suffice it to say that the film’s ending rings resoundingly true.

Piccioni suggests complexity not just in Caterina and Ernesto but in an array of individuals. “Not of This World,” stunningly photographed by Luca Bigazzi, comes vividly, at times painfully, alive. At once muted yet rapturous, Ludovico Einaudi’s score is perfection, expressing the inner turmoil Caterina and Ernesto strive to contain and complementing the sinuous flow of this most accomplished and satisfying film.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: complex adult themes.

‘Not of This World’

Margherita Buy: Caterina

Silvio Orlando: Ernesto

Carolina Freschi: Teresa

Alessandro di Natale: Gabriele

An Entertech release of a Mikado presentation of a Lumiere production. Director Giuseppe Piccioni. Executive producers Lionello Cerri, Rosanna Seregni. Producer Cerri. Screenplay Piccioni, Gualtiero Rosella, Lucia Zei. Cinematographer Luca Bigazzi. Editor Esmeralda Calabria. Music Ludovico Einaudi. Costumes Carolina Olcese. Set designer Marco Belluzzi. In Italian, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes.

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