Vaghe stelle dell’Orsa

Influenced by motifs from the myth of Electra, the films takes its original title (“Dark Stars of the Big Bear”) from the first line of a poem by Giacomo Leopardi, in which he describes returning to the world of his childhood. In the film, Sandra (Claudia Cardinale), a young woman from an Italian-Jewish intellectual family, returns with her American husband Andrew from Geneva to her hometown of Volterra for the first time in years, where her father, who was murdered in Auschwitz, is to be honored with a bust. In the gloomy parental palazzo, she is increasingly carried away by childhood memories. Her brother Gianni, a frail writer, feels more than just brotherly love for his sister. The reunion with her withdrawn mother turns out to be frosty at best. Sandra and Gianni suspect her of having denounced their father. (hjf)