The Nanny

The Nanny

1999. Italy. Directed by Marco Bellocchio. With Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Maya Sansa. One of Bellocchio’s finest cinematic explorations of class and women’s place in the world (both symbolically and physically), is based on the novella by Luigi Pirandello, set during the dawn of 20th-century political activity among the working classes and farmers. An upper-class couple’s pleasant-enough married life in Rome sours when a baby arrives and the mother doesn’t bond with it, or as she puts it, “The baby rejects me.” The husband goes to the countryside to hire a wet nurse, a journey that’s short in distance but, as sketched in a few unforgettable scenes, reveals an entirely different milieu. As the two women— inadvertently set against each other—struggle to find their individual roles in a society full of prejudice and turmoil, their freedom to choose their own destinies is shown to be intrinsically interwoven with that of the lower classes. In Italian; English subtitles. 106 min.