Misunderstood movie review & film summary (2014)

As an actress, Asia Argento is one of those commanding personalities whose mere presence brings a certain jolt of electricity to any film smart enough to include her—with her fierce attitude, keen intelligence and feral sensuality, she can transform even the most mundane material into a kind of cinematic daredevil act that you cannot tear your eyes away from as long as she is on the screen. As a filmmaker, she was able to maintain many of those qualities in her first two directorial efforts, the overtly autobiographical "Scarlet Diva" (2000), in which she played a self-destructive young actress, and "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things" (2004), a disturbing portrait of the most nightmarish childhood imaginable (one that turned out to be imagined when its source, the allegedly autobiographical writings of JT Leroy, turned out to be pure fiction—both the work and the author). "Misunderstood" marks her return to the director's chair after an eleven-year absence and while she has maintained many of those qualities—as many as possible when dealing with a story about a nine-year-old girl—she has also added a number of new arrows to her directorial quiver that are undeniably appealing.

While the story is openly inspired by her own life ("Aria" is technically Argento's actual first name) and is certainly personal to her in any number of ways (right down to casting her own daughter, Castoldi, as Donatina), she has worked here to make this film more accessible than her previous efforts. While those projects, as excellent as they were, made for some heavy lifting with their relentlessly gloomy tones, Argento manages to find a certain degree of dark humor amidst the otherwise grim proceedings that helps to keep it mostly free of the mawkish self-pity that it always seems on the verge of teetering into. Visually, it is also a marvel as ace cinematographer Nicola Pecorini creates an offbeat look that pays tribute to the super-stylish horror epics from Argento's father, Dario. Argento also gets a number of strong performances from her cast—Salerno is a real find as young Aria, and Poccioni and Gainsbourg (playing the role that Argento herself might have taken once upon a time) are both hilarious and horrifying as two people who probably never should have been allowed to become parents. 

"Misunderstood" only steps wrong during its final moments when Aria directly addresses the audience and explains "I tell you all this not to make you feel sorry for me, but just so you will understand me better and maybe be a little bit nicer." Simply put, this bit doesn't work because it does cause the film to slip into the mawkishness that it had so deftly avoided for the rest of its running time. It's also a clumsy attempt to sell us on a character that most of us will already adore by then. Yes, Aria is having a rough time but as we see her navigate the minefield of her pre-adolescence, we can already see the strong and resilient woman that she is sure to become—the kind of woman who will one day look back at those past miseries with a certain amount of humor and self-awareness, and maybe even turn those heartaches into a film not unlike this one.

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