Berlin Film Review: ‘Daughter of Mine’ (Figlia mia)

It has been a little while since the heyday of the Italian island melodrama, since Anna Magnani shaded her eyes from the glare over a darkly sparkling sea, or Ingrid Bergman staggered her stony way up Stromboli.

But even back then it would have been rare to come across such a film in which the tempestuous tug-of-love does not involve a man, but a little red-headed girl and the two women she calls “Mamma.” This is Laura Bispuri’s sunswept, emotive, and elemental sophomore film, after her sensitive culture and gender exploration “Sworn Virgin.” And even when it trips up in its later stages, “Daughter of Mine” is a noble rarity, passionately involved in the exploration of oppositional ideas of motherhood not just as an abstract concept, but as a real and vivid, painfully sacrificial thing.“Wash between your toes, you always let it get so dirty in there,” says Tina (Valeria Golino) to her 10-year-old daughter

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