Critics reviews

This may be the director's idea of a self-portrait, and if so, it's at once self-pitying and self-flattering (never more so than in the misguided final moments, which take the form of a direct, confessional address to the audience). As an actor, Argento can be wonderfully forward and fearless, but here it feels as if she's straining for effect, especially in the garishly over-saturated color palette.

Misunderstood," a buoyantly funny, sometimes desperately sad film about a child searching for love and home, could easily be titled "The Girl, Her Bag and Her Beautiful Cat." These three are the film's holy trinity and its defining image, one that is almost Chaplinesque in its graphic clarity and emotional punch. The director, Asia Argento, has a finely tuned sense of the absurd, but isn't afraid of tears.

Respite, when it comes, arrives in the form of hazy montages and groovy dance numbers, which are where Argento's skills shine brightest — her approach is more conducive to image-making than storytelling.

This whimsical swirl of female bonding, awkward sexual awakenings, cheesy hairdos, and feedback-laden music paint a clear picture of what life must have been like for Asia Argento. While all of this evidences a strong script and cast, the problem lies in the fairly linear narrative and the somewhat melodramatic portrayal of Aria.

As if suddenly feeling guilty for providing us so much pleasure from this derangement, Argento seems to have felt obligated, like Joseph Breen, to condemn all this glorious anarchy, punish our heroine, and send her audience a message. Why, Asia? Why? The movie would have been so much better if it had ended with the girls smoking—or maybe with Aria flying atop the spinning blades of a helicopter hurtling toward the very heart of Rome, screaming with insane glee.

As a director, Asia Argento has yet to advance beyond a notion of "promise." And judging by her third feature, Misunderstood, it's starting to look like she never will. The film has been called in some quarters her most accomplished work to date, but like her earlier films it still seems like so much high school poetry.

In her directing as in her acting, Asia Argento exudes a wounded intensity that brings to mind a very young child who doesn't know how to get the attention she craves except by acting out. Misunderstood, her third feature as a director, is only slightly dependent on the self-pity that informed her last effort, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, but it feels similarly airless.

As a projection of pre-adolescent female subjectivity, Misunderstood is ingenious, direct, and utterly real.