RETHINKING IDENTIT Y IN THE CINEM A

OF SILVIO SOLDINI
I N RECEN T YEA RS, cultural studies scholars have pondered the validity of
notions of static national identity in an ever-increasingly globalised and
diasporic world marked by uidity and transience. Certainly in contemporary societies, mobility of bodies and of temporal and spatial boundaries
create spaces of cultural transitivity where identity is conditioned by
landscapes in ux. In Italy, national and cultural identities have recently
been deeply altered by new migration patterns and by the implications of
closer economic and political union in Europe. These shifting Italian and
European contexts have brought many to question the validity of the traditionally-imagined nation-state as a stable, locatable place. Often alienated
from our personal and collective roots, it is suggested that we must seek,
as individuals, new ways to dene ourselves in relation to our evershifting hybrid sites inected by a multiplicity of languages and a diversity
of histories.1
Italian lmmakers, like many Italian writers, are exploring an Italy in
transition. The lms of Silvio Soldini, marked by a changing Italian landscape, multicultural encounters, and linguistic metissage, embody some of
the trends of contemporary Italian cinema. The narratives of Le acrobate
(1997) and Pane e tulipani (2000) are driven by unexpected occurrences and
encounters in the lives of their female protagonists, events which propel
them to undertake geographical and metaphorical journeys leading to the
discovery of new gender and cultural identities determined by the changing
demographic and multivalent geographic landscape of contemporary Italy.
The two lms, cluttered with small objects and marked by numerous
internal journeys, are about what Soldini calls piccole cose e piccoli
spostamenti,2 about movement and change, following and subverting the
tradition of the road movie. In Le acrobate the journeying takes us literally
to new high ground, Mont Blanc to be precise, a border from which to
view and rethink certain Italian feminist notions; in Pane e tulipani, a
revisionist representation of an over-represented city, Venice, proposes
new geographic and psychological spaces for its protagonist. Both lms
oer us identity as unxed, in transit, linked, as Stuart Hall would suggest,
not to our geographical and cultural roots, but rather to the routes we
deliberately or casually undertake, and which come to determine who we
provisionally are.3
The title Le acrobate refers explicitly to a sculpture in the Archaeological
Museum in Taranto of three carefully balanced terracotta statues which
gure as one of the lms many recurring motifs, mysteriously linking the
protagonists. More obliquely, the term acrobats refers to the protagonists
# Forum for Modern Language Studies 2002

Vol. xxxviii No. 3

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BERNA DET TE LUCIA NO

of the lms, Elena, Maria and Teresa, who are acrobats in their own
right, tiptoeing through life in a continuous balancing act. Products of
the 1990s and living in the aftermath of feminist gains, they nd themselves
struggling to balance traditional gender roles with new ones.
The lms fragmented narrative interweaves the lives of four women.
Elena from Treviso is a chemist in a managerial role in a cosmetics factory.
Maria from Taranto is a working mother who shelves similar cosmetics
in a supermarket. Teresa is the daughter of both. While Maria is Teresas
biological mother, Teresa shares Elenas interest in science, and it is
Elena who functions as the symbolic mother who will mediate her
entrance into a social reality which is very dierent from the one she has
always known. Anita is a mysterious elderly migrant woman who, by
chance, enters the lives of Maria and Elena, and is ultimately responsible
for their encounter. In interweaving the lives of these characters, Soldini
performs a sort of acrobacy of his own as he links their lives through
a series of carefully constructed parallel experiences: the rinsing of their
tear-stained faces; empty post-love-making emotions; pausing to gaze
at shop-window manikins. These shared gestures, actions and states of
mind privilege the viewer to unsuspected bonds between characters
who ultimately confront themselves, each other and the other.
In explaining the title of his rst comedy, Pane e tulipani, Soldini says:
Le anime come i corpi possono morire di fame: dateci pane, ma dateci anche rose.
Cos|' diceva uno slogan delle operaie tessili americane in uno sciopero dinizio
secolo. Noi, alle rose, abbiamo preferito i tulipani che mille anni fa riempivano
i giardini dei sultani di mille colori, che popolano le pagine delle Mille e una notte
e che erano simbolo di desiderio e damore.4

Coloured by tulips, by the protagonists bright attire, and by Ariostos

language, Pane e tulipani is a contemporary, postmodern love story featuring
yet another acrobatic protagonist, Rosalba. After a visit to the temple
of Minerva in Paestum, Rosalbas tour group unintentionally leaves her
behind at a roadside rest stop. Rather than await the return of the coach
and an irritated husband, Rosalba accepts a ride with a succession of
solitary drivers. Originally intending to return home to Pescara, she takes
a detour to Venice where the greater part of the action of the lm takes
place. In an unusual representation of one of Italys most represented
cities, Soldini proposes new and unlikely relationships among underrepresented and marginalised members of an eccentric Italian reality.
On her rst evening in Venice, Rosalba meets Fernando, an Icelandic
immigrant restaurateur who speaks Ariostos Italian. A plumbing accident
introduces her to his neighbour, Grazia, a holistic, new-age masseuse who
will eventually be paired with Costantino, an overweight mammas-boy
plumber, reader of detective stories, hired by Rosalbas husband to track
down his wife. On her way to the train station Rosalba is distracted by

IDENTIT Y IN THE CINEM A OF SILVIO SOLDINI

343

a help wanted sign and convinces an ageing, cranky anarchist orist,

Fermo, to hire her. In his unveiling of an other Italy, through the development of these unusual relationships interspersed with narrative cuts back
to the traditional domestic world Rosalba left behind, Soldini explores
the Italy of the new millennium and all its contradictions. He reveals
a multicultural Italy where mobile phones and new technology coexist
with traditional patriarchal and family values, where standard spoken
Italian, inected with regionalisms, contrasts with the language of a
humanistic literary and cultural tradition.
Journeys
Le acrobate is a journey made up of a series of journeys, both geographical
and metaphorical, which are fundamental in the revision of personal
identity and which lead to new physical and psychological destinations.
The lm begins with a close-up of a tooth ritualistically being removed
from underneath a glass and money being put in its place. A short letter
is then written and carefully placed in an envelope. The focus is on the
detailed and deliberate action, the writing of the letter, and the text,
whose concluding words are: Bisognava farci qualcosa di speciale ma non
so piu' cosa, words which, in themselves, suggest an internal quest of sorts.
The faceless mother and daughter then walk o to post the letter and so
begins the tooths journey. In this scene three characters, the bearer of the
tooth, the writer of the letter, and the unnamed addressee, are introduced
and at the same time deliberately concealed. In its gradual unfolding, the
narrative slowly reveals the lms many relationships, and partial resolution
comes at the end of the lm, as that same tooth ends its journey only
after the completion of a number of other journeys: Elenas mini-journeys
to Anitas apartment, her journeys to the South, Maria and Teresas
journey to the North, and the ultimate journey to the very connes of
Italy, Mont Blanc.
Pane e tulipani begins anchored in Italian history. The temple of
Minerva is the cultural artefact of the recognisable and traceable civilisation from which the busload of tourists can claim its roots. In its opening
shot, the camera frames the temple against the backdrop of a blue
sky: the only sound is the timeless song of the cicada ^ the tilt shot
highlights the grandeur of the temple and of the culture it represents.
The historic site is slowly invaded by a group of clamouring tourists who
heedlessly cross in front of the barrier with little respect for its greatness.
A tour guide begins:
Quando nel 273 avanti Cristo i Romani sono venuti qui, essi hanno incontrato i
Greci per la prima volta; la storia cominciava a fare un grosso balzo in avanti.
Che signica questo? Lidealismo greco, cioe' la civilta' della musica e della losoa,
e il pragmatismo romano, cioe' la civilta' del diritto e della razionalita', si sono

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BERNA DET TE LUCIA NO

perfettamente amalgamati e cio' ha creato una nuova cultura che e' senza dubbio
la base fondamentale della nostra civilta' occidentale di cui noi italiani, il piu'
grande popolo della terra, dobbiamo essere i eri eredi. Nel nostro sangue noi
abbiamo i cromosomi dei greci e dei romani, le piu' grandi popolazioni che
mai siano comparse sulla faccia della terra. A causa di questi cromosomi voi
siete stimolati a lasciare il treno della razionalita' e a prendere la barca della fantasia per veleggiare sulla rotta dei popoli antichi e, a bordo, a stappare la bottiglia
dellentusiasmo.

The tour guides monologue, like countless political appeals throughout

uncertain periods of Italian history, expounds the myths of Italys glorious
past and of the Italian character, and invites the group to embark on an
exciting journey to the discovery of those roots. But the group, we discover,
more easily equates Minerva to a brand of matches than to a goddess, and
is much more interested in the most recent modern gadget than in its
cultural patrimony. Only Rosalba, in fact, will heed the words of the tour
guide and set aside reason to embark on an imaginative adventure. The
journey will lead her to the discovery of a dierent Italy, marked not only
by new high-tech cooking ware, digital cameras and cell phones, but by
displaced citizens who live suspended between the present and the past,
marginalised behind the walls of the exposed yet hidden city, Venice.
Nomadism and subjectivity
In her book Nomadic Subjects, Rosi Braidotti, an important Italian/
Australian feminist critic, explores, among other things, the idea of mobility and what it means for women. What is the relationship between
mobility and subjectivity and how is it connected to a reappropriation and
a redenition of female identity, values and ideas? It is mobility, largely
dependent on economic factors, which the women in Le acrobate share to a
greater or lesser extent. While Elena travels easily, boarding planes eortlessly, there is something almost illicit in the secret departure of Maria
and Teresa as they steal money from the kitty and run o to board a
train in the middle of the night. There is something equally illicit
about the trip to Mont Blanc which Elena, Teresa, and Maria impulsively and secretly embark upon. In their mobility the women cross
not only borders between north and south but also ones of conventional
behaviour. At the same time, they experiment with new identities and
subjectivities, leaving behind social and economic obligation in search
of new places and spaces. The lm is about transience, migration, the
lack of a sense of place that keeps people from feeling grounded in a
specic environment, and proposes a global sense of place that celebrates
displacement as the location for intersection: at the end of the twentieth
century unsettled conditions, destabilization and forced movement seem
to have become a more normal part of life than a xed and permanent
existence.5

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345

Braidotti explores the notion of mobility through three images: the

nomad, the exile and the migrant. Elena represents the phenomenon
of post-war migration or what Braidotti terms nomadism: she spent her
childhood years in Turin and Florence, studied at the University of Milan,
lives in Treviso, is thinking of moving to Bologna. There is a marked dierence between migration and nomadism, a dierence linked to power. The
nomad travels by choice, without a xed destination. Braidotti calls her
the prototype of the woman of ideas who connects, circulates, moves on
and keeps on coming back at regular intervals.6 Elena is a nomad as well
as an instigator: scrutinising Anitas apartment, writing the letter to Maria,
travelling to Taranto. By trespassing into the territories and lives of others,
she crosses boundaries in search of connections, bonds and answers. So it is
Elena, with the potential for mobility which derives from her educational
and economic background, who is the primary mover, the instigator of
what Braidotti calls nomadic shifts. These allow for otherwise unlikely
encounters and unsuspected sources of interaction between experience
and knowledge.
Rosalba also becomes a nomad of sorts. Assuming control of her
mobility, she travels by the means available to her to an unpremeditated
destination where she becomes the catalyst for unforeseen events. However,
Rosalba also problematises the position of the woman traveller. Unlike
male travellers, often constructed as heroes whose greatest fascination
is with themselves rather than with the others they encounter on their
travels, Rosalba represents the woman traveller, attracted by her mobility
but still committed to her values of immobility: her domestic role, her
responsibility to her children. In fact, while choosing to remain in Venice,
Rosalba does not completely break with her past, but rather tries to balance
the two incompatible worlds. Initially, she telephones regularly to reassure
her intolerant husband. As communication between them fails, she then
resorts to answerphone directives, and to letters and postcards with the
contradictory message that she is both on holiday and working. However,
her old reality continues to trespass into her new life in the form of
odd and preoccupying dreams and surreal visions of a neglected family
and wayward son. These eventually drive her, temporarily at least, back
home, the site of her oppression and of paralysing routine.
Migrants and identity
Alongside and perhaps contrary to the image of the nomad is that of the
migrant. Unlike the nomad, the migrant has a well-dened destination:
she goes from one point to another for a very clear purpose often linked to
economics or politics. In contemporary Europe, such migration accounts
for a series of foreign subcultures of predominantly marginalised people
who speak languages and embody cultural values dierent from those of
the dominant culture.7 Anita embodies the migrant woman, with her

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BERNA DET TE LUCIA NO

decisively dierent culture which she veils behind a name attributed to her
by her husband. However, it is her foreignness, her otherness, that enriches
the lives of both Elena and Maria, through values seemingly grounded
in what is metaphorically portrayed as fundamentally feminine, beyond
culture and timeless. For example, the red and white Bulgarian martiniza
(deriving from Marte [Mars] and suggesting the month of March and the
season of springtime), an amulet which Anita bequeaths on separate occasions to Elena and Marta, symbolises both renewal (for the protagonists)
and feminine blood and milk.
In Pane e tulipani, Fernando is the migrant, with a crime of passion to conceal. Like Anita, he bears an Italianised surname: Girasole, the translation
of the Icelandic for sunower. Ironically, rather than the embodiment of
other cultures, Fernando has appropriated the values of a disappearing
Italian culture. Speaking in the literary language of Ariosto and quoting
the Orlando Furioso that he has committed to memory, he represents the
bygone Italian glory of the Renaissance. A sort of Renaissance man
himself, he surprises Rosalba with a knowledge of her culture which is
unfamiliar to her and that she (re)discovers via him. The Orlando Furioso
becomes an appropriate intertext for this lm which, through the metaphor
of journey, examines the constant search for self. In Soldinis lms, as in the
Orlando Furioso, the search is motivated not by fate but by entanglement,
the narrative itself driven by the intertwining of a variety of plot lines and
linguistic techniques which mix the popular ^ in this case the Venetian
dialect and other regionalisms ^ and a higher literary language.
Like Anita, Fernando becomes the bearer of an object that is instrumental to Rosalbas new identity. The accordion that Rosalba discovered
while searching for a full-length mirror in Fernandos room brings her
back to pre-gendered times when, as a child, she learned to play tunes
from her grandfather. Like the martiniza that symbolised renewal in Le
acrobate, the accordion brings renewed music and vitality into the lives of
Rosalbas new friends and is a noticeable symbol of her absence once she
goes away. It is, appropriately, the bond that Fernando leaves as collateral
with the orist, in exchange for the van that he borrows to bring Rosalba
back to Venice.
New homes, new identities
Ultimately, mobility for migrant and nomad suggests a search for home,
and what both lms explore is how that search results in the discovery of
home as a provisional site able to accommodate, temporarily, a constantly
evolving sense of identity. Elenas search for home is evident from the beginning of Part One of the lm. While achievements of feminism have oered
her passage into a previously inaccessible world, the scene opens with an
image of an unsettled and troubled Elena. She is searching for a private
space, a home that would add a dimension of warmth lacking in an

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347

existence marked by her sterile laboratory life, a physical and psychological

space that would put an end to her state of perpetual exile. Elena, like the
exile, is eternally fragmented, plagued by nostalgia, located in a static
past that bears little signicance to her present life. Elena will only nd
home in what Linda Anderson calls a space of dierence contained in
the formulation what will have been; not somewhere we can ever return
to or arrive at ^ never somewhere that can be planned or predicted or
retreated to ^ but an opening up of present parameters towards change.8
The discovery of a new identity linked to this search for home and involving
a willingness to venture into new spaces, both temporal and geographical,
is explored in the lms two parallel burial episodes. The rst involves
the burial of Anitas cat, the second of Teresas tooth.
By agreeing to assist Anita, Elena makes an uncharacteristic break with
her rational and responsible patterns of behaviour (she leaves, as the tour
guide of Pane e tulipani would suggest, il treno della razionalita'). This
rite of passage is marked by an abrupt camera cut which transports her
geographically from an enclosed, urban laboratory environment into an
open, rural, space and, temporally, from her predictable daily routine to a
timeless moment. Unequipped for the burial, Elena and Anita transform
familiar objects into digging implements: Anita digs with a spoon, a domestic implement of nurturing, while Elena uses an instrument linked to her
constructed non-feminine identity, the car jack she locates in the boot. At
the conclusion of their task they share an apple (the fruit that symbolically
links all women) as they stare out toward new horizons. The ritual, accompanied by the signature a cappella music, seals the bond between Elena
and Anita and serves as a rite of passage for Elena. Transformed by her
actions, she emerges from her genderless state and joins a genealogy of
women marked by the symbolic martiniza that Anita bestows upon her as
they return to the city.
Teresa undergoes her own solitary ritual. Like Elena and Anita she is
on a mission, the mission that is at the heart of the journey to Mont Blanc
^ to nd the appropriate resting place for the tooth. With her own digging
instrument, a souvenir ice pick, she climbs the hill in the snow, buries the
tooth and takes a bite, not of the apple, but of a snowball, gazing out at the
horizon that stretches beyond the mountain peak towards Europe. So it is
here on top of the mountain that Teresa, in an act that joins her to women,
buries her tooth and her girlhood innocence. It is the end of the tooths
journey that has covered the length of peninsular Italy, from Taranto
to Treviso and back to Taranto and nally to Mont Blanc, crossing and
duplicating the journeys of the women themselves, nally to nd its
proper resting place, its home. We must do something special, Maria
had said at the beginning of the lm, and the trip to Mont Blanc
has achieved and surpassed that expectation for Teresa, for Maria and
for Elena.

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The climax of the lm takes place on the border of Italy, where Italy
meets and converges with Europe, and questions the future of cultural
and national identity. Elena and Maria are balanced in the middle, basking
in their own undened relationship and in their discovery of home in
a post-feminist space which replaces the familiar feminist communities.
Caren Kaplan suggests that:
We must leave home, as it were, since our homes are often sites of racism, sexism
and other damaging social practices. Where we come to locate ourselves in terms of
our specic histories and dierences must be a place with room for what can be
salvaged from the past and what can be made new.9

Anita represents the best of what can be salvaged from the past, with her
practical wisdom unmarred by the alienation and excessive consumerism
of the 1990s. Anita propagates rites of passage and tradition that in turn
celebrate the female genealogy proposed by the lm. At the other end of
the temporal spectrum, Teresa holds the key to the future, to renewal, as
a result of what she has learned from her mothers via a revived adamento
or mentoring process.
The nal part of Le acrobate bears many of the characteristics of the road
lm where boundaries are tested and crossed. But unlike road movies such
as Thelma and Louise which oer only negative resolutions, with womens
friendship leading inevitably to death, Le acrobate proposes new relationships between women in a world where men are present but peripheral,
relationships that do not necessarily disrupt but which tenuously coexist
alongside decaying institutions. The open-endedness of Le acrobate resides
in a dierent type of transgression, one which, according to Richard
Sennetts theory of disobedient dependence, involves a deance based
on dependence, a rebellion not against authority but within it [_].
The world into which a person has entered through desire to transgress is
seldom [_] a real world of its own, a true alternative which blots out
the past.10 Unlike Thelma and Louise, who publicly transgress against
authority, the women in Le acrobate secretly and privately transgress within
authority: no one knows we are here, they whisper. This rebellion
within authority suggests in fact what the lm is about: piccole cose
e piccoli spostamenti rather than revolutions; acrobacy (physical,
intellectual, and spiritual) as a means to new identities and to new possibilities. And so, standing on the provisional border with their subjectivity
in transit, acrobatic women gaze tenuously into the post-feminist
millennium, balancing at the crossroads between past and future.
Pane e tulipani proposes a utopic conclusion rather than the uncertain,
open-ended future more appropriate to its dramatic predecessor. In a
romantic happy ending that poses as many questions as it answers,
Rosalba returns to Venice with Fernando, after his sublime declaration
of love. While Le acrobate privileges female relationships, Pane e tulipani

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349

celebrates the possibility of soulmate relationships between men and

women. The lms nal scene features an illuminated Venetian piazza transformed into a dance oor where Costantino and a pregnant Grazia,
Rosalba and Fernando, and a host of other characters, including Rosalbas
son, happily dance their way into a new, colourful harmonious future.
Rosalbas (and to a lesser extent Costantinos) movement away from
familiar environments and paralysing daily routines becomes the vehicle
for changes in states of mind and identity through encounters which otherwise would never have taken place. As Pitassio states: il movimento e' lo
stesso sottrarsi alla routine lavorativa e aprirsi alla casualita' e allincontro
con il diverso da se'.11 Ultimately, Rosalba is able to leave the stasis of her
domestic existence, to move away from a relationship which consists solely
of routine to one which celebrates her creativity and allows her to dance.
Costantino is able to pledge his constancy to Grazia only by throwing
away the cell phones which link him to the myth of il lavoro sso and to his
mothers traditional expectations.
The suspension of real time is as essential as geographic displacement in
the development of a new identity. Real time in Pane e tulipani is suspended
the moment Rosalba sets foot in Venice and is highlighted by the musical
score, the echoing footsteps, and the lapping sound of the water. In a telephone call to her husband, she assures him that she will see him at home
the following day, but her departure is delayed as she loses touch with
real time and repeatedly misses the train home. Of course, the suspension
of time is associated with the choice of Venice as geographical site. Soldini
describes timeless Venice as:
Venezia citta' unica al mondo, lontana dal rombo incessante delle nostre vite [_].
Daltronde non so immaginare in quale citta' avremmo potuto creare il nostro
mondo un po fuori dal tempo. Venezia e' un luogo della fantasia e al tempo stesso
una citta' estremamente reale, forte della sua verita' storica e piena di contraddizioni
legate anche allincombente presenza di una delle piu' vaste aree industriali
italiane. Una citta' sull acqua inattuale che si contrappone alla velocita' delle societa'
sviluppate del duemila.12

Venice is at once the mysterious and magical city open to endless romantic
possibilities, a recognisable cultural landmark, and an industrial zone.
A site of contradictions, its very representation in the lm disrupts the
traditional expectations of the viewer who discovers Venice with Rosalba,
arriving by night from Piazzale Roma, through dark and quiet back alleys
to quartiere Marco Polo with its small pensione run by a woman speaking
a strong Venetian dialect and a restaurant run by an Icelander who praises
Chinese cuisine. Venice is a city of contrasts, where east meets west; it is a
city of masks which conceal its multiple identities. Only occasionally do we
catch glimpses of the over-represented, universally recognisable Venice: San
Marco reected once in Rosalbas sunglasses, and the Piazza San Marco

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seen from a distance as Rosalba and her friends leave by boat to celebrate
Eliseos birthday on an outlying island. Primarily, the Venice we see is
the Venice of the campi less roamed by tourists, and the characters that are
slowly revealed to us are its eccentric inhabitants ^ old and new. In its
exploration of identity Pane e tulipani disrupts notions of geographical
xity, and scrutinises a city which is constantly subjected to supercial
viewing. Appearance doesnt do her justice is an oft-repeated line
by Fernando: rst impressions do not do justice to his sofa, to his daughterin-law, nor to the city and to the characters that the lm slowly unravels.
Soldini states:
Credo che la forza del cinema stia nella capacita' di pescare in profondita' proprie
storie, di far diventare protagonisti personaggi oscuri strappandoli allanonimato
delle loro vite, con la convinzione che dietro ogni formalita' si celi un universo
ricco e insospettabile. Come direbbe Fernando: lapparenza li penalizza. Rosalba
e' una casalinga, Fernando un cameriere, Grazia una massaggiatrice, Costantino un
idraulico, Fermo un oraio: ma queste denizioni non ci dicono nulla di loro, dei
loro sogni, dei loro desideri. [_] La nostra scommessa e' stata quella di raccontare
cio' che si nasconde dietro le apparenze e sfugge a un primo sguardo.13

In both Le acrobate and Pane e tulipani, Soldini carefully constructs characters and landscapes which allow us to explore the notion of contemporary
identity. Clearly, after viewing his lms, we come away with a conrmation
of Halls notion that identity is a position in ux, the point of suture
between the social and the psychological, a point of enunciation and
of agency at a particular moment in time.14 The protagonists of these
two lms locate a new sense of subjectivity through encounters that
take place in provisional, multicultural landscapes where past and future
collide in the form of old talismans, museum statues, ancient temples,
Renaissance texts, cell phones, trains and planes. Real communication
is linked not to speaking the same literal language but through the paradoxically more facile communication that comes in the encounter with
the other, from a dierent culture or a dierent time. It is from these
new encounters, it is suggested, that a new sense of identity will emerge.
And it is only through mobility, of body and of mind, that we gain
access to new physical and psychological spaces of intercultural exchange,
new provisional homes which are not immobile sites of oppression but
displaced places which can accommodate alternative relationships and
new identities.
BER NA DET TE LUCIA NO

Department of Italian
University of Auckland
Auckland
New Zealand

IDENTIT Y IN THE CINEM A OF SILVIO SOLDINI

351

NOTES
1
See Revisioning Italy: National Identity and Global Culture, ed. B. Allen & M. Russo
(Minneapolis, 1997), in particular, M. Russo, Venice, Venice and L. A.: Cultural Repetition and
Bodily Dierence, in ibid., pp. 235^53 (p. 242).
2
M. Sesti,Soldini e Calopresti: il cinema italiano (e non solo), Duel: mensile di cinema e cultura
dellimmagine 79 (2000), 28.
3
Interview with Stuart Hall, in: Culture and Power in Race, Identity and Citizenship, ed.
R. D. Torres, L. F. Miron & J. X. Inda (Oxford, 1999), p. 402.
4
Pane e tulipani, 28 February 2001. Quoted from <http://www.luce.it/lm/paneetulipani/
pani.html>.
5
L. McDowell, Gender, Identity, and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies (Oxford, 1999),
p. 203.
6
R. Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Dierence in Contemporary Feminist Theory
(New York, 1994), p. 254.
7
Ibid., p. 22.
8
L. Anderson, Women and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century: Remembered Futures (New York,
1997), p. 132.
9
C. Kaplan, Deterritorializations: The Rewriting of Home and Exile in Western Feminist
Discourse, Cultural Critique 6 (1987), 194.
10
R. Sennet, Authority (New York, 1980), pp. 33^4.
11
F. Pitassio,Il cinema nomade. Appunti su Silvio Soldini, Annali di Italianistica 17 (1999), 116.
12
Quoted from <http://www.luce.it/lm/paneetulipani/pani.html>.
13
Ibid.
14
Hall, p. 401.