26/03/2015 - Today sees the release in cinemas of the second work by Giorgia Farina, a black comedy that made its global debut at the Bari International Film Festival (21-28 March)

Napoleon is a goldfish, the unwanted guest of Anita, a single career woman, who’s cool and merciless. At a certain point in her life everything goes haywire. Napoleon will be just the first victim of the protagonist of the new film by Giorgia Farina, a young director who with her second work returns to depict the vindictive heroine of The Girl with the Pistol by Monicelli (like in her first film Amiche da morire [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – read the review - David di Donatello for Best Debut) and gives Micaela Ramazzotti (seen recently in Il nome del figlio [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) her first role as the bad girl. But in Ho ucciso Napoleone [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (lit. I Killed Napoleon), a black comedy that made its premiere last Tuesday at the Bari International Film Festival (21-28 March) and released today in cinemas, no-one is what they seem and even the most harmless character turns out to be, between one dramatic twist and another, a little hyena.

Anita, a brilliant manager with her devilish hair and her 1940s dark lady looks, discovers that she’s pregnant by her boss (Adriano Giannini), who is married with children, and in just twenty four hours she loses what she loves most in life: her freedom as a single woman with no kids, and her job. Determined to take back what’s hers, Anita secretly plots a sophisticated vendetta plan, helped by a timid and awkward lawyer (Libero De Rienzo) and by an impromptu justice squadron (or “a group of big slobs”, as the director prefers to call it) made up of a drug dealer (Elena Sofia Ricci), an unemployed woman who’s forever on a diet (Iaia Forte) and a young neurotic female lawyer (singer-songwriter Thony, previously star of  Every Blessed Day [+see also:
trailer
interview: Luca Marinelli
film profile] by Virzì).

Almodóvar and 80’s-style comedies like She Devil, in which the woman is a fighter, are the other references mentioned by Farina and her co-screenwriter Federica Pontremoli (Habemus Papam [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nanni Moretti
film profile], Magnifica presenza [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Un boss in salotto [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]). “Anita is a modern woman”, explains the director, “somewhere between an android and a Hitchcock-style femme fatale, for whom family and work seem irreconcilable. But in the end she shows that today, we women can be everything: wives, lovers, mothers, career women, and even bad women”. “I really enjoyed myself wearing Anita’s mask”, says Ramazzotti, “she’s a cold-hearted devil, scandalous because she drinks and smokes while she’s pregnant, she hates men and children, she doesn’t complain, she doesn’t look for excuses and she carefully carries out her vendetta”. The exact opposite of the roles played up to now by the actress (a caring mother in The First Beautiful Thing [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and Those Happy Years [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Daniele Luchetti
film profile], among others), and perhaps not entirely in her element. 

Produced by Bibi Film and Rai Cinema, Ho ucciso Napoleone is distributed from today by 01 Distribution in 270 theatres.

(Translated from Italian)