The long-awaited “I am Rosa Ricci” comes out at the cinema on Thursday 30 October. The film, directed by Lyda Patitucci, promises the public to reveal the past of the beloved and ferocious protagonist of “Mare Fuori”, Rosa Ricci, played, in the series as in the feature film, by Maria Esposito. In the cast of the film we also find Raiz in the role of Don Salvatore Ricci, Rosa’s Camorra father, and Andrea Arcangeli in the key role of one of her jailers.

“I am Rosa Ricci”, the plot of the film

At the beginning of Lyda Patitucci’s film, and for a large part of the story, we get to know a Rosa Ricci previously unseen by the public. Just any little girl, whose greatest peculiarity is that of being carried in the palm of her hand by her father. Rosa Ricci is already 15 years old, so she’s not exactly a child, she has a boss father, a brother in prison, and yet we still find her whiny and tending to believe in Santa Claus. All this unbelievable naivety is swept away forever by the experience that changes her life, a turning point from which he never comes back. One evening sweet Rosa accompanies dad on the yacht of a South American drug trafficker. The appointment, however, is a trap: the father is thrown into the sea after the request for an enormous amount of money which will be worth as a ransom for dad’s princess, kidnapped and locked up prisoner on a small island that is not well identified but certainly impregnable. And it is here, during this imprisonment that Rosa Ricci, the ordinary teenager, becomes the ferocious Rosa Ricci that the viewers of “Mare Fuori” love so much.

Her exterior becomes harder every day, just as that particular talent, the ability to feel hatred and transform it into destructive energy, grows in her hour by hour. While, like a new Countess of Monte Cristo, our Rosa searches for a way to escape from the island, many things happen, starting with a Stockholm syndrome that makes her fall in love with one of her captors.

Will fans of “Mare Fuori” like “Io sono Rosa Ricci”?

Trying to “explain” a character loved by the public like that of Rosa Ricci, through a prequel that tells the story of her previous “Mare Fuori”, is a risky idea, but also amply justified by the success of the TV series.

Finding the right idea to give a past to the ferocious Rosa was truly a great undertaking, given that we were looking for “the turning point”, the pivotal episode, the day that would lead the little girl to take the path of social deviance. An idea that obviously ignores the fact that, from what we have been told, Rosa Ricci was born and raised in a Camorra family, therefore used to being immersed in asociality, deviance and violence. Despite having this unfortunate background, at the beginning of the film we find Rosa who is an ordinary girl, even more naive than her peers. The great turning point, the revolution in his life is the harshness of a kidnapping, experienced on a Mediterranean island and in which even the little girl with the handsome jailer escapes.

Until Rosa succeeds in her attempt to free herself and discovers that she can manage on her own, even without her father to protect her, in the solemn moment in which, for the first time, she not only holds a gun, but uses it, proclaiming “I am Rosa Ricci!”

Our anti-heroine completes her training-transformation by rebelling with gun in hand against this specific episode of violence suffered and, only at that point, does she become the Rosa Ricci that we all know, especially the many fans of the series. This Camorra-style teen melodrama seems like a missed opportunity to give the protagonist of Mare Fuori a great story of criminal education, and instead seems to be aimed purely, if not exclusively, at that very young audience of the TV series: the narrative solutions chosen, which avoid any possible complexity, clearly reveal this.

Rating: 5.8

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