Fuori, the latest film by Italy’s Mario Martone (Nostalgia, The King of Laughter), is curiously inert, especially when you consider that most of the film features its two main characters wandering through Rome. This is a noncommunicative film, which may be a problem of cultural translation. It’s about the late Italian writer Goliarda Sapienza, played by Valeria Golino, and perhaps Fuori plays better if the viewer has read Sapienza’s work or even knows who she was. Born to a radical family (at one time she and her siblings were babysat by Gramsci!), Sapienza fell on hard times as her expansive modernist-feminist novel, The Art of Joy, was summarily rejected by the Italian literary establishment. Reduced to stealing and fencing jewelry from an old friend, Sapienza was arrested in 1980 and sent to Rebibbia Prison.
Goliara’s post-prison life is the primary focus of Fuori, although flashbacks to her time inside pop up throughout the film. They are brief, random, and unbidden, and Martone’s failure to integrate them speaks to the broader formlessness of the film. The title, Fuori, translates as “out,” and comes from a chant the inmates bellow when one of their number, Barbara (Elodie), fakes a suicide attempt. Conceptually, the title plays on Sapienza’s obsession with her incarceration and her emotional attempt to continue that life by remaining in contact with other former inmates on the outside. “With those women in Rebibbia,” she tells her husband (Corrado Fortuna), “I felt an unbelievable, unimaginable freedom.”
If that sounds like the upper-class writer is romanticizing her time in lockup, Fuori doesn’t seem to mind. The film takes Goliarda’s rather opaque, observational perspective as its dominant viewpoint, and so we never really understand who this woman is or what motivates her. Again, this could be a problem that is obviated for European viewers more familiar with Sapienza than this writer. Nevertheless, one gets the sense that Martone staked all his chips on Golino’s skill and charisma, assuming it would carry the day.
It almost works. Golino has always been a magnetic screen presence. She remains stunning at age 60, a fact that Fuori refuses to let the viewer forget. By the third nude scene, one almost gets the sense that Golino may have strong-armed the director into showcasing her physical attributes. Then again, it could be Fuori’s way of punctuating the strange subtext that is only spoken aloud in the final few minutes of the movie.
Golino’s co-star, Matilda De Angelis, plays Roberta, a young criminal who befriended Goliarda during her stretch in jail. In a couple of scenes, Fuori hints at the situational lesbianism typical of the women-behind-bars genre, but mostly the film ignores any gratuitous action. It’s treated matter-of-factly. However, as we observe Goliarda and Roberta’s post-prison adventures, one starts to sense that something more complicated is afoot. As it happens, Roberta is attracted to Goliarda, but also sees her as a surrogate mother. This confusion is in itself a turn-on for the younger woman, but although Goliarda rejects her more overt advances, we never really perceive how any of this affects her.
This lack of psychological shading makes the issue of forbidden sexuality seem to come out of nowhere, something Fuori is ill-equipped to really handle. Again, this points to the film’s broader deficits. If we needed to engage with Sapienza’s literary output to fully understand the character we’re seeing, Martone could’ve sent along a reading list. Then again, this would only point to the relative fruitlessness of Fuori as a cinematic endeavor. It has all the contours of a high-toned European biopic, but it unfortunately insists on keeping the viewer on the outside.
Published as part of IFFR 2026 — Dispatch 1.
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