Melissa P Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

Melissa P

15 1/2 year old Melissa (Valverde) is in love with her classmate Daniele (Primo Reggiani). When Daniele humiliates her and takes her virginity Melissa vows to become like a man herself, to think only of her pleasure. She begins to keep a journal of her sexual coming of age while trying to maintain a home life with her distant Mother (Sacchi) and adored Grandmother (Chaplin)

Based on Melissa Paranello's autobiographical novel 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed (a much better title) Melissa P could have simply been a sexploitation movie. What it ends up as is much more.

There's certainly trappings of sexploitation. 18 year old lead Maria Valverde is first shown topless, inspecting her body in a mirror and she's seldom fully covered in the film's opening half hour which sets up Melissa's determination not to be hurt by sex and what surrounds it. However the film broadens out thereafter. It certainly still focuses on Melissa's sexual coming of age but there's an excellent thread of famillial drama here as well.

There are hundreds of coming of age movies and many of those deal with teenage sexuality. Melissa P distinguishes itself in a few ways. First off Director Guadagnino is a proper filmmaker. He creates many memorable sequences and images (a blindfolded Melissa's POV as she's led down some steps to something truly awful) where many would settle merely to point and shoot and get the lead actress to take her shirt off.

That lead actress is the other great strength of the film. To begin with Maria Valverde is heart stoppingly beautiful. However, unlike the mid-teenagers of Hollywood movies she doesn't look 30. Indeed she appears much younger than her 18 years, uncomfortably so at times. It's her acting that impresses most though. She's got a natural feel, seeming absolutely like the 15 year old girls you knew at school (or wanted to) but there's clearly a more adult understanding at work as when the emotional scenes come she plays them with gravity and reality.

Equally excellent are Geraldine Chaplin and Fabrizia Sacchi as Melissa's Grandma and Mother.

The ending is a touch drawn out, we could probably go without the very last scene but that's a nitpick about what is, overall, a very fine coming of age film.

MELISSA P

A bittersweet 'coming of age' movie, in which the teenage Melissa discovers her sexuality and then spirals down into a world of depravity, through which she discovers her 'true self'. This coincides with problems with her family and at college. The film makes no apologies for the at times brutal subject matter, nor for its ending. Worth watching.