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Nancy Savoca An Appreciation jacqueline reich 1995 Within the context of American cinema, both mainstream Hollywood and independent productions, familiar faces such as Martin Scorsese and new talents like John Turturro and Quentin Tarantino have brought issues of Italian-American ethnicity to the screen. Their films, however, concentrate primarily on male characters and how they come to terms with their ethnic roots. Women in films by these Italian-American male directors, as well as by others, have for the most part conformed to Daniel Golden’s widely quoted and accepted stereotypes: the sensuous bombshell à la Sophia Loren or the overbearing Italian mamma.1 This Madonna/whore dichotomy, so pervasive in cinematic representations of Italian-American female subjectivity , has recently been examined and undermined in the works of one of America’s more underappreciated directors: Nancy Savoca. With a subtle yet powerful touch, Savoca’s films offer up portrayals of Italian-American women who rise above these stereotypes, providing unique insights into issues of gender and ethnicity. The female characters who dominate her films give voice and vision to this less heard and less seen aspect of the Italian -American experience. The Morris Park section of the Bronx, where Savoca was born and raised, not surprisingly remains a source of inspiration for her work. The Italian-American men and women who populate her films are multifaceted, not merely iconic signs of their ethnicity. However, if there is one theme which runs throughout her work it would be the constant, complex battle of the sexes. Conflicts rage between a young Italian-American couple embarking on their future in True Love (1989), between a Marine headed to Vietnam and a homely, aspiring folk singer in Dogfight (1991), and a butcher who wins his wife in a pinochle game in Household Saints (1993). While a 300 Nancy Savoca: An Appreciation 301 love story provides the framework for the confrontations, Savoca’s three films address such topics as the lack of communication between men and women, rituals of male and female bonding, and the often suffocating constraints imposed by socially prescribed rules of proper masculine and feminine conduct. Savoca needed six years to bring her first film True Love to the screen, having been rejected by every major studio not once but several times (it was eventually financed privately by friends including the filmmakers John Sayles, Jonathan Demme, and Susan Seidelman). Winner of the Grand Jury prize at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival, the film grew out of her and her husband’s own experiences in attending numerous neighborhood weddings . True Love tells the story of Donna and Michael, whose impending marriage becomes the plot’s structuring narrative event. Their union, however , is far from the idyllic fairy tale of ‘‘true love’’: never do they even exchange the words ‘‘I love you.’’ In fact, as the day draws closer, the couple comes to realize that their relationship is based on social conventions and expectations. Their uncertain future is symbolized in the film’s final image, after Michael has declared his desire to spend their wedding night with the ‘‘guys’’ and Donna is left crying on the banquet hall’s toilet. As they pose for their wedding photo in front of the on- and off-screen camera, Michael stares numbly into space and Donna shields her tear-streaked face with her hands. Unlike a contemporary film Moonstruck, in which gender conflict and Italian-American ethnicity are romanticized and simplified all for the greater good of la famiglia, Savoca’s film provocatively explores the social forces and pressures from both family and friends that can lock the sexes in constant battle. In True Love, men and women exist on different wavelengths: the more women crave stability and responsibility, the more the men shy away from it. Yet Savoca does not limit her treatment of gender difference to the film’s diegesis. The lovers are often shown separated by physical barriers: phones, doorways, and finally the bathroom stall in which Donna has taken refuge. In one efficacious scene, Michael and another woman reenact the mating ritual through dance, first gyrating seductively close and then chasing one another around the bar’s pool table. Moreover, Donna, Michael, and their family and friends are not synthetic ethnic caricatures. Michael, for instance, is light-skinned and blond. Their mothers are not hysterically overbearing but rather quiet and sympathetic. Being Italian American is not an excuse for irrational behavior and lunacy, as is literally signified...

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