“A vision of childhood that is unapologetically kitsch and fantastical.”

With their directorial debut Le bambine (Mosquitoes) premiering in competition at Locarno, Valentina and Nicole Bertani have crafted a vision of childhood that is unapologetically kitsch and fantastical – at times veering into outright grotesque – in recounting how three young girls form an unusual friendship in late ’90s Italy. However, while the film’s throwback aesthetic and willingness to embrace the bizarre makes it stand out from many other films that have covered similar ground, it falls short in terms of creating an emotional throughline to give the girls’ first exposure to the complications of the adult world dramatic heft.

Eight-year-old Linda (Mia Ferricelli) has recently arrived in Ferrara with her mother Eva (Clara Tramontano), a twentysomething party girl who is even less mature than her young daughter. By chance, she strikes up a friendship with sisters Marta (Petra Scheggia) and Azzurra (Agnese Scazza), the daughters of an eccentric nurse-turned-dollmaker and a taciturn, chain-smoking surgeon father. Together, the three begin exploring the world around them, sometimes accompanied by the sisters’ gay nanny Carlino (Milutin Dapcevic). As their paths cross with selfish and self-absorbed parents, strange neighbors, and a moralist busybody who thinks she knows what is best for the girls, Linda, Marta, and Azzurra begin to take their first steps towards independence and discovering who they are when freed from stifling home lives.

Le bambine exists in a world that is recognizably our own but just slightly off-kilter, one in which the adults are caricatures of recognizable figures and children are in a purgatory space between being typical kids and wise beyond their years, with possible supernatural connections thrown in for good measure. The film cheerfully embraces the bright colors and clothes that defined the ’90s (with Azzurra’s constant Tamagotchi companion another delightful touch of nostalgia), and is most successful as an endearingly kitschy object of childhood remembrance, with lo-fi special effects at key moments adding to its childlike perspective. The synth-inspired score also deserves much of the credit for effectively establishing a sense of place and mood. But the film quickly settles into a repetitive rhythm – the girls have an encounter that opens their eyes to the hypocrisy and selfishness of the adults around them, as Linda becomes more and more distant from her irresponsible mother – that robs the central trio of complexity and ultimately makes everything rather simplistic. And Le bambine‘s bold adherence to its heightened, eccentric-verging-on-grotesque tone proves initially amusing but increasingly grows thin across its nearly two-hour runtime. Thankfully, the cast makes up for the film’s shortcomings. The child actresses are very effective at walking the tricky tonal tightrope that the film and their roles require, and the adult actors all understand the assignment of playing characters that reflect the exaggerated, one-dimensional manner in which children often think of adults (although Carlino often veers dangerously close to simply being an out-of-date stereotype). The film is ultimately stuck in a strange middle ground of viewing its world in much the same way that one of its protagonists would, but not being targeted at a young audience.

Le bambine establishes the Bertani sisters as promising stylists who can develop a unique artistic vision with the proper nurturing, but it also shows many of the typical growing pains of a first screenplay that isn’t totally successful in relying more on tone than dramatic complexity. Much like its young protagonists, it is stuck between childhood and adulthood and wobbly on its feet despite some strong elements and a game cast. But even with its flaws, it is an occasionally endearing look back at the period just before technology as we know it today became part of our everyday lives, and a quirky reminder of a (slightly) simpler time.