Italian cinema by the already experienced director Marco Tullio Giordana. His latest production, Woman's name, tells the story of Nina, a single mother who goes to work in a church-run nursing home. Everything seems to be going well, until one of the senior officials of the institution calls her to a strange meeting in his office.. The meeting soon turns into an attempted sexual assault on the young woman. Nina manages to escape from the situation, but his life has only begun to get complicated. Trying to report the facts will bring you new problems, even with her co-workers.
“The origin is in a memory from my childhood”, Tullio Giordana recalled at a press conference as one of the reasons that led him to direct this drama. “I was walking with my older sister., I was six and she was fifteen. (my sister was very beautiful; it is now). So, two boys appeared with a scooter and started bothering her, to make unpleasant comments, to touch her ass. I found this horrible. Why can two men treat a woman like this?? I have always found this way of doing things, which is very common in Italy, embarrassing” When the project was presented to him, Tullio Giordana did not hesitate to accept it. A film whose script was written three years before the #metoo movement broke out. Written by screenwriter Cristiana Mainardi, the director of films like An Italian storyrecognized Mainardi's essential contribution behind the script's cuisine. “You can see perfectly that it is written by a woman because you can see the ambiguity of female reactions to certain situations.”. A man would not have had the courage to distribute the blame among the different women. The idea of the film is that the problem with this behavior is not in the conflict between the sexes. It is a power conflict. One has it, the other one doesn't have it. And those who do not have it have no way of revealing themselves to this., "This is more of a class struggle than a struggle between the sexes.".
Class struggle or abuse of power that is reflected in this institution and its hierarchies. Tullio Giordana does not want to charge against the church in this particular case, however, His influence remains relevant in Italian society. “The Catholic Church has had great power in Italy, now he has less”, commented. “The film does not want to show the Catholic Church as responsible for these behaviors.”, problem that affects many institutions around the world. But the Catholic religion has a lot of presence in the power of some institutions, especially in medical care. That is why the film chooses this priest who, before bringing up everything that is happening, "he prefers to cover up the entire chain of power".
For Giordana, after the conquests of the sixties, there seems to have been a setback. What is the reason for this situation??, he was wondering. “After the revolution of the sixties, men's attitude towards women was controlled. But in the last twenty years there has been a setback, even before the years 30 y 40, due to the economic crisis, due to the loss of work and the impoverishment of the entire Western population. The protagonist, Nina, In another time I would have changed jobs and looked for another one without an asshole as a boss. Instead of that, It is very difficult to find another job and women are forced to face harassment. Sexual harassment has increased as a result of job loss. As seen in the last image of the film, Nina wins in court, But he leaves court and everything starts again.”
This situation of emotional fragility pushes its protagonists towards a paralysis that will only be broken by the example of this woman., Nina, who finally dares to take the risks. So, little by little, things will change. “And when you have a brave person in front of you, that impulse is contagious.”, like diseases. Based on real events, This story has made the Italian director reflect on some old approaches regarding the situation in which workers find themselves and their famous class struggle.. “I do not understand the class struggle with the concept of the Marxist and the boss as that imposing figure, but as an unequal distribution of wealth. I think that as long as very few people have infinitely greater wealth than the rest of the population, that class struggle will continue to exist. Class struggle that can be understood between countries, between continents. It is a more restrictive concept, closer to psychoanalysis, precisely historical or sociological. Within this class struggle, women are a fundamental element. “Real equality would largely resolve the fact that women's struggle existed.”.
Despite what was said, there seem to be solutions. In Italy, just as the movie shows, This situation of abuse has a strong ally in a highly developed judicial system, the director defended. “The interesting thing is that in Italy the legislation on harassment is very advanced. Italy was the first country to admit that harassment was a crime against the person and not against morals. Since the sixties, Italian law already reflects all these concepts. The laws are good and they exist, but the problem is that then you have to apply them, you have to respect them. This requires a very profound change of mentality., Families have to teach some rules, some values. And when I talk about families I talk about fathers and mothers. This process can be very long and three may not be enough., four or five generations to carry it out”. G.LEON
