“A small gem about finding the joy of life again in the direst of situations.”
“We loved each other for the time of a song…” – La Javanaise, Serge Gainsbourg
Anna seems to be stuck, unable to move forward in every sense. Her driving license is taken away after an incident. She is seriously ill but refuses treatment and doesn’t want anyone to know about it. She lives with her longtime boyfriend, but he spends most of his time working abroad. Within her chaotic family, between arguments of two brothers acting stubbornly about who got an appendicitis operation when they were little, and their mother’s fragile health situation, things are never about Anna. She seems to have no sense of belonging with any of these people. People who should be closest to her. But Anna feels unable to change anything.
She will notice Cristi, before Cristi will notice her. Their paths will cross again. Cristi is a young Ukrainian immigrant who had to flee her country for obvious reasons and lives with some relatives in Italy. She works as a caretaker, but can’t seem to fit in with this new life here; she feels stuck, and plans a return to Ukraine.
Once we get to the scene where Anna and Cristi actually meet, it is like the physical manifestation of their situation. Both women are waiting for the last bus home one night, a bus which seems like it will never arrive. A guy calls a taxi, offers a ride to both women. “Taxi, mon amour?” Cristi usually resists any human connection in this exile, but Anna convinces her, and that becomes the start of a friendship between the two. After they ward off the tiresome men, of course. Anna is the one who pushes for this friendship, because she’s the one in need of someone new to connect with, while all Cristi hopes for is to reunite with her old friends back home. They both want to move, maybe on different paths. One in a new direction, the other back to the old one. But this companionship, their long drives in Anna’s boyfriend’s car, takes away that feeling of being stuck at least for a brief period of time. For the time of a song, as Serge Gainsbourg sings.
The script for Taxi Monamour, co-written by director Ciro De Caro and actress Rosa Palasciano (who plays Anna), doesn’t care about big resolutions or seismic activities in the lives of these two characters. Their course of life will not change, and they won’t give up on their chosen paths after this brief encounter. But one cannot say that they are not changed profoundly; they are really good for each other. Cristi gets on her bus, eventually; Anna steers her own wheel. And we leave these two women more open and caring, not only to each other but to life in a deeper sense and to the people around them.
De Caro’s relieved filmmaking approach, combined with the bittersweet humor and effortlessly charming performances by both Palasciano and newcomer Yeva Sai, make Taxi Monamour a really easy watch, a small gem about finding the joy of life again in the direst of situations.