Melissa P. (2005)

An adolescent girl, living with her mother and her grandmother, will have her first sexual experiences in a heavy and excessive way.

Director:

Luca Guadagnino

Writers:

Barbara Alberti (screenplay), Cristiana Farina (screenplay),

Stars:

María Valverde, Letizia Ciampa, Primo Reggiani

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
María Valverde	...	Melissa P.
Letizia Ciampa	...	Manuela
Primo Reggiani	...	Daniele
Fabrizia Sacchi	...	Daria
Geraldine Chaplin	...	Nonna Elvira
Nilo Mur	...	Marco
Claudio Santamaria	...	Custode del museo
Carlo Antonelli	...	Prof. Italiano
Pier Giorgio Bellocchio	...	Istruttore di nuoto
Marcello Mazzarella	...	Chiunque
Elio Germano	...	Arnaldo
Alba Rohrwacher	...	Clelia
Davide Pasti	...	Leo
Francesca Madaro	...	Livia
Esmeralda Prete	...	Titti

Storyline

Melissa lives with her mother and her grandmother in Sicily. She has a close relationship with her grandmother, a heavy smoker, who seems to be the only person in the world who understands Melissa. Melissa's father lives in another country. One day Melissa and her friend go to a party at a school friend's home. While there, Melissa meets Daniele, a boy from the school, and has her first sexual experience. The experience is far from being what Melissa always has dreamed it would be, because Daniele forces her and later forgets her. However, Melissa has fallen in love with Daniele. Back at school, when Melissa tries to get Daniele's attention, he barely remembers her. He takes advantage of Melissa's feelings for him, convincing her to have sex with him whenever he wants. When Melissa discovers Daniele's true motivations, she takes revenge by having even wilder sexual experiences with him and other boys. She even begins keeping a diary to document her sexual experiences. Melissa's mother...

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Plot Keywords:

sicily | 2000s | sex scene | teen | italy | 

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Taglines:

You have to lose yourself before you can find yourself

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Official Sites:

Gaumont Columbia Tristar [fr] Official site

Country:

Italy Spain

Language:

Italian

Release Date:

18 November 2005 (Italy)

Also Known As:

100 Escovadas Antes de Dormir

Filming Locations:

Italy

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$606,934 (Italy) (2 December 2005)

Gross:

$5,151,936 (Europe) (2 December 2005)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Bess Movie, Pentagrama Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

100 min

Sound Mix:

SDDS Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Although she trained for a few months, 'Maria Valverde''s Italian wasn't good enough, so she was dubbed. As consolation, Valverde dubbed herself for the Spanish version.

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Connections

Spoofed in Ti stramo: Ho voglia di un'ultima notte da manuale prima di tre baci sopra il cielo (2008)

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Soundtracks

"Cousteau's Zodiac"
Written by Axel Pi (as Axel Pi Caballero), Jesús Senra (as Jesús Martín Senra) and Marc Herreros Ros
Performed by Sidonie

User Reviews

Ruthless approach to female teen libido

An Italo-Spanish co-production about the sexual awakening of teenager Melissa, loosely based in the semi-autobiographic novel "100 colpi di spazzola prima di andare a dormire" by Melissa Panarello.

The movie shows the dilemmas, challenges, and darkness that young women face when they become sexual beings, try to accept their sexuality, but have no sexual education or guidance.

It is truly rare finding a movie that focus on teenager women and sex, and not men, and in which the woman is presented as an explicitly sexual human being.

The movie is frank and even ruthless in its approach to contemporary teens' sexuality in general and Melissa's in particular. We see her strong shameless strong sex drive, which she cannot harmonize with her wish to be loved and respected as a woman by a man. She struggles making sense of the importance of accepting social boundaries and not giving way to peer pressure to fit into a group, which is a quintessential teen problem. Melissa's awakening is a path of pain as well as of pleasure, but takes her to very dark places, in scenes that can be disturbing.

Despite the good premises, the script is uneven, not always engaging, and has most adult characters barely sketched except for Melissa's and for Melissa's charming eccentric grandmother -played by Geraldine Chaplin-. The character of Melissa's mother Daria -played by Fabrizia Sacchi- is barely drawn, and very stereotypical. The absent father, and his marital relationship with Daria, is barely explained, just a reference outside. Most male teen characters are depicted as despicable villains, stereotypical machos, and I don't think I want to believe that is always the case.

Maria Valverde is very good as Melissa, actually, she's the best thing in the movie. She has an impressive acting registry for such a young age. Her face is splendorous always, her expression innocent, childish, weak and boyish sometimes, hyper-feminine, dramatic, strong and sexual some others. Valverde has to deal with very raunchy scenes, some of them very dramatic, and she succeeds at making believable her character. Geraldine Chaplin is always a delight, but I did not find her especially inspired in this movie, mostly because the way her character is written. The rest of the actors are just OK.

A not always engaging movie, but with some interesting themes and a good performance by Valverde.