It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I found it very hard to bring up sympathy for the characters in this film. Acctualy, the only person I liked was the chauffeur, and only because he slapped one of the annoying kids. All the characters were awfully stereotyped and practically all the events were clichés. It was very easy to predict what was going to happen. The two girls that represent the two political visions are the best examples.Due to the fact that I'm Dutch and not Italian doesn't really give me the right to comment this because I'm not fully familiar with the Italian political atmosphere etc. Maybe in Italy it is that Black/White...

Paolo Virzi's "Caterina va in citta" is a film where he decided to throw his own personal take in the Italian society of the present. Mr. Virzi is a director of talent. In this film, he decides to give us a disarming heroine, Caterina, who is at the center of two opposing factions, the left and the right.At the beginning of the film we meet Giancarlo Iacovani, who is a teacher in a northwest coastal town, perhaps in Tuscany. He is telling his boring students how he has hated them for making his life miserable while trying to teach them something, as he is bailing out to his native Rome, where he is finally been transferred.His daughter Caterina, the intense and earnest teen ager, is seen practicing in the chorus and she gets carried away singing the beautiful music she adores. She appears not too keen on the moving to Rome. The area where they are moving to seems to be a place where chaos reigns and where the apartments are so close to one another that the young girls can see all what's going on with all the neighbors across the street.As Caterina is going to start classes, a proud Giancarlo, is seen taking her to her first day of school at the same one where he has gone himself, years before. The class Caterina joins is an unruly place where the young people are clearly from two different factions, those with money and right wing sympathizers, or those with money but left wingers leaning into communism. Caterina is made feel unwelcome for sticking out as she doesn't belong with one group, or the other.Upon going home from the first day of school and showing her father Giancarlo the names of her classmates, he becomes impressed because most of the students seem to be connected to who's who in Rome! Caterina is accepted first by Margherita, the rebel with left wing parents. Caterina learns this girl has gotten rid of her father's manuscript, which he had sent to Margherita's mother, an editor. Then, Daniela, the leader of the opposite faction, takes her under her wing and sophisticates her appearance. At the end, Caterina realizes Daniella is no friend either. The affection that Daniela's cousin shows to Caterina is thwarted when her snobbish mother makes a point to tell him to stop seeing the provincial girl.The film keeps a fast pace that works for the movie. It seems that Mr. Virzi parallels the life in Rome to what we are seeing. The city, alas, has the wrong effect in Giancarlo, who is suspended from his teaching post and as he tries to fight for it, he is made aware he doesn't amount to anything and decides to take off on his own after he fixes his old motorcycle. It is clear at this point that Agata, the long suffering wife, has had it with his ups and downs as she finds solace with Fabietto, the kind bachelor friend.The best thing in the film is Alice Teghil, who, as Caterina, is seen exploring new things that ultimately can't compare with the life she had in the small town she came from, with all its problems and small mindedness. Sergio Castellito plays the strident Giancarlo, a man that comes unglued in pursuing his dream of returning to the capital with little success once he is there. Margherita Buy, a beautiful actress, has little to do as Agata, the long suffering wife of Giancarlo. She is the only sane person we encounter in the film.As the bad girls, Carolina Iaquaniello, is the grungy-Italian-style-like Margherita, the girl grown among the intellectual crowd. Federica Sberema, plays Daniela, the rich girl who is a mess and who moves with a fast crowd. The supporting cast do a good job.The best part is the ending in which we watch the radiant Caterina doing what she does best: singing to her heart's content!

One of the best movie I've seen recently. An exciting coming of age, an exhilarating comedy, a deep and painful portrait of our society at the present moment."Caterina Va in Città" has outrageously funny scenes — starting with Giancarlo's biting farewell to his despised small-town students. But it's a very dark sense of humor. The film is really about personalities, especially his. Imagine a standard coming-of- age movie about a smart, unusual kid learning that it's okay to be an individual, different from the rest. Giancarlo is that kid, only he's 40-something and he hasn't had that final scene where everything turns out okay. Angry that others have gotten all the breaks in life, he righteously criticizes the establishment, big money, the old boys' network, and yet envies them at the same time. Back in Rome, he has a chance to mingle with exactly the class of people he inwardly resents, and every chance he gets to make a mark among them turns to embarrassment.Played with great flair by Sergio Castellitto (the insouciant chef from "Mostly Martha"), Giancarlo is an enormously sympathetic but uncomfortable character, and his contradictions have a ripple effect on everyone in his orbit. His wife Agata (Margherita Buy) lives in a shell rather than get in the way of her grandiose husband. Caterina (Alice Teghil) is thrust uneasily into a social scene she's thoroughly unprepared for, made even more out of place by her dad's instructions. She doesn't seem to have inherited his low self-esteem, but this new life flies way over her head most of the time. It's a complex portrait of a family's struggle, set amid the tumult of big-city society and class consciousness. "Caterina" is a very rewarding movie.

I am a student in Australia, in year 9, 15 years old, studying Italian at LaSalle Catholic College Bankstown. I viewed this film as an excursion 3 days ago, and I loved it. I feel for Caterina because I guess I am a little naive in a way. She didn't realize that people were using her, she didn't realize that Margherita liked her in a different, more romantic way, she didn't know about a lot that went on in Rome. It was a very nice, dramatic and funny storyline, and i suppose it appeals to a large audience. I rated it 9/10. I took off 1 mark because I feel not enough was shown of Edward, the guy she loved, the guy from "down under", the guy who most Australians can identify with. He played a prime role in my eyes because he brought her life back on track when she had run away. A little more could have also been shown of Fabietto and Agata's relationship. This film was an excellent representation of the comparison between the posh side of Italy and the grateful and appreciative side of Italy