TIFF 19: False Idols In Chiara Malta’s SIMPLE WOMEN

In Simple Women, Italian filmmaker Chiara Malta makes her sophomore debut on the strained relationship between an inexperienced director and a washed-up indie star — a scattershot account of her real-life encounter with Elina Löwensohn. Simple Women had its World Premiere at TIFF as the Discovery programme’s opening night film, still Malta‘s film gets lost among the blockbuster and arthouse fanfare of the festival. But Malta‘s first leap into narrative film with Simple Women points to a director with a unique aesthetic and experimental voice, it seems unbelievable she shot such a clean film in a matter of weeks.

Compelling Narrative

The film plunges heart-first into a narrative that’s made compelling by the cloddish, charming nature of its hesitant protagonist, Federica, (Jasmine Trinca) a fictionalization of Malta herself.

Known as starring in Hal Hartley‘s 90s cult classic, Simple Men, Löwensohn quickly dissolves from public life, appearing in dispersed low-budget roles here and there. Yet since her discovery of the actress at the cusp of her teens, Federica carries her fondness for Elina into adult life. This fondness blooms particularly through their shared struggles with epilepsy, which is a major plot point in the film that feels cleft from the rest of the film.

 Years later, Federica, now a director, stumbles onto the actress by chance one night on the streets of Rome, where they’re quickly thrown into an enthralling conversation on Elina’s whirlwind life.  

Swept off by Elina’s story untangling before her, Federica quickly asks her if she’d allow her to produce an indie biopic of her life. After much convincing, Elina hesitantly agrees, yet what follows is a truculent, tangled relationship between director and defiant muse.

Arguments erupt, a superstitious Elina solicits the help of a tarot reader on the street for insight, walks out on the production, all while Federica grapples to attain creative success out of a woman who isn’t who she thought.

The film makes for a shaky character study, one that’s surely made interesting by the unclear nature of who exactly the film is studying. Is it Elina, the fictional, meta version which Malta envisions in the film? Or is it Federica, with her irresolute nature and her naive intransigence for a false idol? 

Regardless of any plot points, it’s easy to sink into the airy visuals of Simple Women, and the film does a stunning job of capturing both Rome and Bucharest at dusk, underneath the gauzy, orange light of cobblestone streets and tucked away corridors. It seems that Rome would be the exact backdrop in which you’d meet your idol and go for a stroll.

While the film sidles from Roman Italian to Romanian, there’s something unquestionably Italian about it, like its director, down to its deadpan humour, gestures, and cinematic language.

Disorienting Plot

However, where this 90 minute falters is in its muddled narrative, as the line between reality and fiction becomes increasingly blurred. It loses us in what’s biographical and what’s meta. The final act finds Federica confronting both her epilepsy and unspooling project on set, but viewers are felt feeling just as disoriented as the ambitious director herself.

Perhaps the ending in Simple Women is what feels languid, what left me aching for more. We’re left deserted with the conclusion that those around Federica – particularly Elina, whose role in an indie flick has now come to haunt her – don’t truly believe in her artistic capability. Banal, regretful lines are thrown by both Federica and her childhood hero, yet one reverberates long after the credits roll: “The truth is I gave you my life, and you did nothing with it!”

Simple Women makes for an interesting examination of false effigies and washed-up idols and one thing’s for sure, the two women in focus are most certainly anything but simple. And that makes for good cinema.

Watch Simple Women