| When a woman decides to take the vows to be a nun, she is choosing to be closer to the everlasting love of God rather than the transitory love with a man. This is the premise of the Italian film Not of This World (Fuori dal mondo), directed and cowritten by Giuseppe Piccioni. Set in Milan, when the film begins a jogger presents a baby, wrapped in a sweater, to Sister Caterina (Margherita Buy) in a park. She, in turn, takes the baby to a hospital. Rather than returning to her duties at the convent, she wants the baby to find a proper home, and therein ensues a detective story in which the search is for the mother and ultimately the father. Since the sweater has a laundry mark, Caterina goes to the cleaners shop and meets the owner Ernesto (played by Silvio Orlando), who leads Caterina on the trail to find the mother, a former employee of the shop, and then much of the rest of the film deals with relations between cheerful Caterina and sad Ernesto. During the search Caterina finds that most people are content to lead ordinary, often unhappy lives with little commitment to anything but take-home pay from ordinary jobs. Initially, all the characters conform without reflection to their social roles, which are symbolized by the uniforms that they wear. Ernesto’s coat and tie is just as much a uniform as those of the nuns, the hospital nurses, Ernesto’s employees, a bride, and the party clothes of the guests at a wedding reception. But the discovery of the child forces everyone, including Caterina herself, to reexamine the roles that they play in a society that produces such lack of joy, and the clear inference is that peer pressure produces a listless conformity in an affluent society in which most workers are interchangeable parts. Caterina’s mother (played by Giuliana Lojodice) copes badly with a divorce and objects to her daughter’s decision to become a nun. The child’s mother Teresa (played by Carolina Freshi) is not ready for marriage with Gabrielle (played by Alessandro Di Natale), who is the father of the child but does not want to force the issue. Ernesto runs the cleaners because it was his father’s business; he lives in a big house alone but lonely, taking pills for a heart condition though only in his early 40s, and he is too busy with his near-bankrupt business to have a social life or even to be curious about the social lives or identities of his employees. Caterina’s quest involves several trips to the hospital to look after the baby, named Fausto by the hospital authorities in preparation for adoption. Thanks to Caterina’s persistent inquiries, Ernesto believes that he might be the father, though he is not, but he is so stimulated and shaken up by the quest that he ends up as a visitor in the convent for a few days until he can sort out his life. When the film ends, Ernesto becomes more sociable, the baby is adopted by a loving mother and father, Teresa continues to search for a true love, and Caterina returns to the convent more convinced than ever that she will live in but “not of this world.” MH |