Amanda (2022 film)

Amanda is a 2022 Italian coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Carolina Cavalli.

The film premiered in the Horizons Extra section of the 79th Venice Film Festival, and was later screened at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. It was released theatrically in Italy on 13 October 2022 by I Wonder Pictures.

Cast

 * Benedetta Porcaroli as Amanda
 * Galatea Bellugi as Rebecca
 * Michele Bravi as Dude
 * Monica Nappo as Sofia
 * Margherita Maccapani Missoni as Marina
 * Ana Cecilia Ponce as Judy
 * Amelia Elisabetta Biuso as Stella
 * Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Viola

Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 95% based on 44 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "A is for Amanda, an amusingly absurd coming-of-age comedy that offers poignant observations and positions director Carolina Cavalli as a talent to watch." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100, based on 10 critic reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian described it as "a film of style and surface, and these are cleverly created and maintained." Wendy Ide of Screen Daily called the film "a refreshingly unconventional and acidic deadpan comic portrait of an offbeat female friendship." Beatrice Loayza of The New York Times selected the film as New York Times Critics' Pick, writing, "Amanda is absurd and abrasive, but also sympathetic thanks to Porcaroli's performance."