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Narrative & characters

Arianna, a nineteen-year-old who appears female but has never menstruated, returns with her parents to the family’s childhood home on Lake Bolsena. This return acts as a catalyst: in a liminal environment suspended in time, visual and bodily traces emerge that compel her to confront a repressed truth – a history of intersexuality, suppressed through a parental-medical protocol of “normalization.”

Arianna unfolds as a cyclical, corporeal bildungsroman in which outward action is minimal and the narrative arc develops through a perceptual, sensory, and existential process. The film adopts an intimate, incremental mode of narration, structured around small gestures, blurred recollections, sparse dialogue, and sequences often constructed in silence. The absence of conventional dramatic progression coherently mirrors the protagonist’s state of suspension and uncertainty, as she embarks on an identity quest that unsettles the binary opposition of male/female.

The representation of the character deliberately avoids stereotypes of victimization, distortion, or pathologizing medicalization. Arianna is neither an object of pity nor of fetishization; rather, she is portrayed as a figure in transformation, grounded in her physicality and traversed by questioning. The parents, too, are rendered ambivalently: affectionate yet complicit in practices of repression and normative control. The film privileges an inward gaze: many shots are static, contemplative, and long-focused, constructing a non-voyeuristic narrative of desire. Arianna consistently observes her surroundings with sincere curiosity – her own body and those of her peers: her cousin Celeste, embodying a burst of femininity that still feels alien to her, and Martino, with whom she tentatively explores heterosexual desire and pleasure.

Here, the “queer gaze” displaces the conventional “male gaze,” centering the protagonist’s subjective, unsettled perspective rather than an aesthetic of objectified bodies. The film seeks to deconstruct the notion of identity as an immutable essence, proposing instead an interplay of space, body, and memory that destabilizes any fixed conception of selfhood.

Stereotypes & strategies of inclusion

Arianna engages with the representation of intersexuality, one of the most invisibilized and pathologized conditions within cultural and medical discourse. The film develops an anti-spectacular, non-didactic strategy, entrusting comprehension to the gradual unfolding of lived experience. The protagonist’s body is staged as a site of exploration and knowledge, never as an object of voyeurism. Crucial in this respect are the sequences in which Arianna, alone in the lakeside house, examines her body before the mirror. These moments are not rendered as spectacle for the observer, but as an internal and epistemic experience in which the spectator is positioned to look with Arianna rather than at her – thus reversing the conventions of traditional cinema, which has tended to display and decipher the intersex body as “other.”

Overall, the film resists stereotypes commonly attached to intersexuality, most powerfully through the hospital sequence, which conveys the violence of medicalization as the body is reduced to mere anatomy, scrutinized under a male gaze and a regime of expert knowledge. Importantly, the narrative does not culminate in a linear trajectory toward “normality,” but rather in a reappropriation of complexity – symbolically reinforced by the final refusal of labeling and the open-ended embrace of silence.

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The End Is My Beginning

“I was born twice, in fact three times: first as a boy, on an unusually warm January day in Rome; a few years later I was born again, this time as a girl, in the wooded hills of central Italy, and my mother gave me the name Arianna. The third time I was born was the summer my father reclaimed the lakeside house where I had grown up – but that took twenty years.” This voice-over (an homage to Middlesex, the novel by American writer Jeffrey Eugenides) opens Arianna and guides us from darkness, through the constant sound of water cascading over a luminous white limestone wall, toward the face of the protagonist submerged in water, in a suspended, dreamlike atmosphere. Arianna opens her eyes, a metaphorical – if scarcely veiled – gesture that introduces the theme of rebirth: an inaugural and liminal act marking the beginning of a transformative journey. Water, here evoking amniotic fluid, recurs throughout the film as a symbol of regeneration, transition, and above all the dissolution of binary schemas and preordained norms of identity.

The same image closes the film, conferring upon the narrative a circular structure. Shortly before the ending, Arianna’s voice-over returns, this time embedded within a group of women in a scene that recalls the feminist consciousness-raising circles of the 1970s. This collective, protected, and self-aware space offers the possibility of sharing experiences linked to sexuality and, above all, to female pleasure, taking shape as a site of sisterhood and the politicization of lived experience. In this way, the film succeeds – though not without stylistic hesitations – in introducing a political dimension: the protagonist’s individual search for self gains strength precisely through encounter with others and the opening toward a plural, relational subjectivity.

The film thus concludes with the protagonist once again immersed in water: she has not yet arrived at a singular answer regarding her identity, but has at last embraced the very possibility of seeking. As several studies on circular narrative structures in films addressing intersexuality have pointed out, the cyclical inner journey and symbolic reworking of trauma aim to reestablish emotional balance and reclaim the lost or fragmented parts of the self.

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Speculum

Another particularly significant sequence is Arianna’s confrontation with the medical institution, which powerfully underscores the fracture between normative clinical knowledge and the subjective truth of lived experience. When Arianna goes to the hospital for a CT scan prescribed by her gynecologist, two male doctors – visibly intrigued by her condition – paternalistically persuade her to undergo an additional gynecological examination. From the outset, the ambiguity of consent and the doctors’ condescending demeanor foreshadow the dehumanizing climax that soon follows. In a striking scene, a group of male specialists zealously and dispassionately inspects the protagonist’s genitals with clinical rigor, while the camera cuts to a close-up of her tense face, marked by discomfort and unease.

The stark contrast between the doctors’ technical, abstract, and authoritative discourse and the protagonist’s bodily and emotional vulnerability highlights the violence embedded in medical institutions, whose authority is also exercised through pathologizing narratives. This representation radically unsettles the very concept of “care,” implicitly denouncing the violent and invasive dynamics that have historically shaped the treatment of intersex people. In particular, it alludes to the still widespread practice of subjecting intersex infants and children to irreversible genital surgeries – not for urgent medical necessity, but for aesthetic purposes and to conform to binary, cultural, and patriarchal norms.

The scene clearly reveals the entanglement of medical and parental authority, a disciplinary alliance that enforces the individual’s forced integration into one of the two poles of the binary sexual order – male or female. Arianna is thus excluded from decision-making processes concerning her own body, kept in ignorance of a truth she can only gradually reclaim in adulthood, initiating a process of subjective and political re-signification of her identity.

Conversations

Director Carlo Lavagna discusses his film Arianna in conversation with Professor Stefano Albertini (New York University, March 21, 2017).

Strategies

Arianna is a debut feature that situates itself within the complex and fragile ecosystem of contemporary Italian independent cinema. Directed by Carlo Lavagna, the film is the outcome of a long and uneven process: conceived initially as a documentary, it eventually took shape as a work of fiction after years of research, study, and fieldwork. The director has recalled meeting an intersex woman – the founder of Italy’s first intersex association (AISIA)—whose testimony played a pivotal role in shaping the screenplay.

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Debut and Low Budget

The project was made possible through intensive fundraising efforts, with a modest budget of approximately €380,000, assembled thanks to a combination of public funds and targeted investments from Rai Cinema, Istituto Luce Cinecittà, the Ministry of Culture – Directorate General for Cinema, and the Lazio Region.

As the director notes in his production statements, the film was ultimately realized through the decisive intervention of producer Tommaso Bertani, who personally took on the responsibility of bringing the project to completion during a critical phase of deadlock. To achieve this, the production adopted a strategy rooted in sustainability and in the human and emotional cohesion of the team: a small group of professionals willing to share the sacrifices imposed by limited financial resources, motivated by a strong commitment to the film’s vision. Director of photography Hélène Louvart, for instance, offered her support unconditionally, working even on weekends with a minimal crew.

Communication rhetorics

The communication surrounding the film Arianna reflects a tension between authorial intent and the limited media strategies typical of Italian debut features. On the one hand, Lavagna and his team adopted a sober, observational style, devoid of sensationalism, seeking instead to convey with empathy the complexity of a non-normative identity journey. Public discourse around the film – from its promotion at festivals to interviews with the director – emphasizes the “necessary” value of the narrative, highlighting its contribution to the social and cultural debate on intersexuality and, more broadly, on non-conforming subjectivities.

Lavagna has repeatedly expressed his desire to “break a taboo” and to address an invisible subject with a participatory gaze, the result of extensive documentation and careful listening to real testimonies. In this sense, the communication around the film also takes on a political dimension: it is not limited to promoting a cinematic product, but aims to raise awareness among a broader audience, creating space for reflection on the normative role of medicine, family, and culture in shaping gender identity.

The decision to present Arianna in contexts such as the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and the London Film Festival further confirms a communication strategy that privileges circuits capable of foregrounding the political and transformative dimension of the film – even at the expense of broader commercial visibility. As Andrea Minuz points out in a study on debut works (La solitudine delle opere prime. Considerazioni sulla visibilità e invisibilità degli esordi italiani degli anni Dieci, 2015), this is a common feature of many Italian first films, which often lack an effective communication strategy to reach specific audiences, particularly in the digital and social media landscape.

Conversations

Circulation patterns

Awards and Festivals

Carlo Lavagna’s film participated in numerous festivals between 2015 and 2016, including:

• Dallas International Film Festival 2016: Narrative Feature Competition – Special Jury Prize
• Globi d’Oro 2016: Best Actress (Ondina Quadri)
• Festival du Film Italien de Villerupt 2015: Competition – Amilcar du Jury, Amilcar du Jury Jeunes
• Venice Biennale 2015: Venice Days – Official Selection – Nuovo Imaie Talent
• Award (Ondina Quadri), Laguna Sud Award, FEDEORA Award for Emerging Actress
• Les rencontres du cinéma italien à Toulouse 2015: In Competition – Student Jury Prize

Arianna was also nominated in the category of Best First-Time Director at the 2016 David di Donatello Awards. Presented in the Venice Days section at the 2015 Venice Film Festival, the film immediately positioned itself as a work tailored for festival circuits, particularly LGBTQ+ and arthouse contexts. Its selection in these venues highlights how Arianna responds to a need for narrative diversification within Italian cinema, which has traditionally been more cautious in addressing questions of gender identity.

Nevertheless, although supported by Rai, the film did not secure broad distribution in mainstream circuits and was instead largely confined to thematic festivals – evidence of the market’s ongoing resistance to “non-normative” subject matter. This dynamic demonstrates that, despite signs of openness, industrial policies remain shaped by conservative logics of representability.

Reception

Although Arianna received generally positive evaluations from professional critics – who praised its thematic sensitivity, visual elegance, and original approach to representing intersexuality – audience reception has been more nuanced and, in some cases, distinctly critical. On IMDb, the film holds an average rating of 6.2/10, indicative of a moderately favorable but not enthusiastic response. On Rotten Tomatoes, while the critics’ score reaches 67%, the number of audience reviews is too small to form a representative sample. On Letterboxd, ratings range widely from 2 to 5 stars, revealing a split between those who value the film’s intimate and poetic atmosphere and those who instead criticize its slowness and narrative fragmentation.

Particularly telling are the comments on MyMovies.it, where the film averages between 2.6 and 2.8 out of 5. Yet even here, the rating is based on a limited number of reviews. Some viewers are sharply dismissive: one user describes it as “vague and improvised,” calling it a “slimy little Italian film,” while another dismisses it outright as “silly.” Such reactions suggest that, alongside critical appreciation, part of the audience perceived the film as weak in narrative and stylistic terms – a sign of a polarized reception caught between authorial ambition and audience expectations.

Most of the negative reviews do not question the legitimacy of the subject matter itself, but rather the film’s ability to represent it effectively, engagingly, or in a cinematically accomplished way.

Italian and foreign press

Italian Press 

Emiliano Morreale, “There’s a Secret in That Unripe Body,” L’Espresso, October 8, 2015.

«[…] More than the suspense of self-discovery – which matters little – the true strength of the film lies in its ability to capture the protagonist’s unease and fragility, to convey the intensity of her gaze upon things. And although the story is only loosely inspired by real events, it takes on an almost metaphorical dimension: Arianna’s physical, sexual, and psychological turmoil is, in amplified form, that of every adolescent. The flaws are minor: a few seconds of voice-over at the start, a slightly off-key pre-finale in the operating room, certain theatrical flourishes in the adult performances. Small matters compared with the vitality of the whole. What strikes the viewer is the credibility of the situations, the dialogue and its rhythms; the director’s eye follows the protagonist with gentle fluidity, with delicacy and elegance of touch, and a trace of aestheticism. The attention to bodies – sensitive, never prurient – is well integrated into a constant interaction with landscapes of countryside, lakes, islands. And the film as a whole succeeds also thanks to its lead, Ondina Quadri (daughter of editor Jacopo and niece of theater critic Franco): with her elusive body and icy, science-fiction eyes, fragile and unformed, she fills the film’s frames». 

Cristina Piccino, “The Adventurous Discovery of a Girl Without Gender,” Il Manifesto, September 24, 2015.

«The director lets himself be guided by her movements, her fears, her doubts – those anxieties common to all adolescents, which for this girl seem even greater. He stays by her side, discreet, never emphatic, supporting her in an uncertain and painful search by “embracing” her point of view, that unconscious space that still belongs to her childhood. […] What is Arianna seeking? The answers to her desires, to the confusion between masculine and feminine that makes her feel drawn both to a boy and to her very sensual cousin – something that is part of all of us, of discovery, of life. Yet this existential investigation leads her toward something else: a missing piece, a fundamental part of herself that her parents decided to erase forever».

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Massimiliano Schiavoni, “Arianna. My Body That (Doesn’t) Change,” Quinlan.it. Film Criticism Magazine, September 4, 2015.

«Lavagna, in short, adheres to the familiar Italian expressive rhetoric that lies somewhere between “lyrical realism” and intimism; the camera follows the character by relying on direct sound and on the supposed truth of half-phrases whispered under the breath, of the falsely semi-improvised happening (see the hospital sequences, in which real doctors were also made to perform). It is an expressive apparatus steeped in ambiguity, which is confirmed in the “cruel” gaze directed at Arianna’s body – from the gush of blood on her underwear to the wounds, both real and overtly metaphorical.

More than once the film seems to be the account of a colossal rejection crisis (perfectly credible, moreover, given the final twist), in which a body fails to meet expectations and appears to deform itself in a tormented compromise with the interpretive grids of man. […] The packaging, in short, is that widely seen in eager Italian debuts, where expressive timidity often seems dictated by the fear of aiming too high – at least on a linguistic level – since the money isn’t there anyway, and therefore it seems pointless to waste time dreaming.

Yet weaving his way through all this, Carlo Lavagna nevertheless manages to construct reflections that are anything but trivial, in which an apparent refusal of life is transfigured into a visceral exaltation of life in every form. Because existence itself persists, regardless of the vessel that contains it».

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Foreign Press 

Roy Stafford, “LFF 2015 #8: Arianna (Italy 2015)”, ITP Global Film, October 23, 2015.

«This film works because of the director’s sensitivity, the brave performance by Ondina Quadri and the cinematography by Hélène Louvart […]. It’s a film with a non-purient interest in the sexuality of young people which is depicted openly. Perhaps some audiences might be offended by this openness but it feels to me like a genuine attempt to explore and understand important questions about identity.

I’ve seen several excellent Italian films at festivals over the years and it’s disappointing that so many of them either don’t get a UK release or when they do appear it is so fleeting that they make little impact».

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Hannah Bellamy, “Preview: Arianna”, SAD Mag, July 29, 2016.

«Screening at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival on August 20, Arianna is an “issue film” in many ways, despite the cringey-ness of that term. Overall, the film handles adolescence, gender, and sexuality with immense empathy. The brave and tender storytelling is fitting with the brave and tender protagonist».

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Guy Lodge, “Venice Film Review: ‘Arianna’”, Variety, September 5, 2015.

«Achingly conscious of the differences between her and other women her age, she spends a considerable amount of time before the mirror, scrutinizing her boyish frame and petite breasts. Her sexual development, too, is very much at the beginner stage, though a summertime encounter with fellow teen Martino (Eduardo Valdarnini) triggers an unprecedented flush of carnal desire in her. Lavagna’s script, co-written with Carlo Salsa and Chiara Barzini, is pleasingly frank about the intuitive randiness of unformed sexual beings of any sex; in its sensitive depiction of a teenager getting more deeply acquainted with her own body, Arianna would pair up well on a screening bill with the otherwise dissimilar U.S. pic The Diary of a Teenage Girl».

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