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 Zimmerman	...	Marco (as Nilo Mur)
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:

teenage sex | sex scene | orgy | loss of virginity | oral sex | 

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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

Country:

Italy Spain

Language:

Italian

Release Date:

18 November 2005 (Italy)

Also Known As:

100 Escovadas Antes De Dormir

Filming Locations:

Italy

Box Office

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$7,212,124

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

The film's title, Melissa P. (2005), is derived from author Melissa Panarello's source novel, "One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed."

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Quotes

Nonna Elvira: Paradise is where I am, your grandpa used to say.

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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

Aimer est mourir & materico, concreto
Written by Walter Fassano
Performed by Nathalie Tanner

User Reviews

Cruel and tender movie - just like the teen age which it describes

I saw many embarrassed and even angry reviews on this film, which were pushing me off the chair, and i wanna talk not about the film itself, but the topic it chose. Because that caught me in memories of my youth, that is what also makes a great film, the script, and I can't be grateful enough for this made me remember.

The film is not as much of a fiction as many would like it to be. In very realistic way discloses the hyper-sensitivity of youth, the feelings, the special way everything is coming to a man's brain, the sex, the colors, messed up thoughts...and then here are decisions. It is wonderful how Melissa always want to choose what to do with her life, what to feel, how to act, what to search for, but somehow the change is only in her deeds but not in her inside, her diary pickups are often in disharmony with what happens to her afterwards. But although she is in fact doing this to herself, she is just so full of it! And so she is coping with her teenage pain as rational as she can in her age. Of course, the sex. When you don't know what it is, but you want it badly. She is less self-aware then the character played by Liv Tyler in Stealing Beauty, but much more pro-active. She doesn't let situations pass by, she is grabbing what she can of them, she does not wait in a corner. That's what i liked at Melissa. The cruelty of acts and the sweetness of the inside. Unsplittable. And that this movie is more real than a sweet romance movie. It is of the age - if she were a little more older, the tender detailed camera would lost its narrative function. And maybe the casting would pickup another actress.

Anyway, I love it more and more. It's telling exactly the teen story, which have been missed.