Little Women

I'll be honest, I was expecting a movie that might change my life. But even though I thought it was a nice flick and I liked the girls, it didn't happen. There is no need to debate the performances, they are so natural and convincing that I completely forgot about all the actresses' previous roles and for a while I just saw them as Little Women. Slightly less perfect, in my opinion, was the script. It made it difficult for me to orient myself in time, so I gave up after a while and instead of enjoying the story I just enjoyed watching the atmosphere, the costumes, and basically a female world where the male element intrudes a little less than we’re used to. (26/12/2021)

I went to the cinema to see the advanced premiere of Little Women and I can honestly say that I couldn't have picked a better movie for the last day of the year. I’m not familiar with the book, but I've always loved historical costume dramas, and when I saw everyone who was going to be in this film, I couldn't wait to see it on the big screen. Little Women impresses with a strong story that may smack a little of romance at times, but it is so believably written and above all superbly acted that you can safely ignore that and lets yourself ride the waves of a story about four sisters who couldn't be more different. All the actors played their parts to perfection and in a convincing manner, whether they were main or supporting roles. In addition, I must not forget the beautiful sets, the costumes and Alexandre Desplat's unmistakable music. Little Women mixes elements of drama, romance and humour in an artful and unforced way. I applaud and give it both thumbs up! (31/12/2019)

A cinema visit to Little Women took me nostalgically back to my high school days at the mall. The full theater with only two men in it, or the lending of tissues between rows from the middle of the movie on reminded me again of the beauty of the collective cinematic experience that Netflix just can't give you. As for the film, it could probably get by with the fantastic performances from Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh alone, whose characters breathe with such life and energy that they redeem even a few of those Jehovah's Witness scenes full of Christmas tables, gifting the poor, and other kilos of goodness like a children’s book. Still, Greta Gerwig has chosen to break the entire two books into different episodes, which she stacks on top of each other, albeit without chronology, but in such a way that the events contained within them ideally have the strongest possible impact in terms of our moment-to-moment connection with a particular character. On several occasions we witness dialogue whose importance is revealed to us a scene later, which takes place either several years before or after the dialogue. Underneath all the liveliness, then, there is actually a clockwork that successfully tries to sell us, with the strongest possible impact, the most important personal moments in the lives of several characters. And it's quite possible that with a standard narrative, the film wouldn't have had such a strong impact. (17/02/2020)

This story of four sisters coming of age in the mid-nineteenth century and figuring out what they want out of life is surprisingly relevant in the twenty-first century. In it, Greta Gerwig gives space to the actresses in particular, who certainly don't let her down, and she handles the touching and funny scenes with complete ease. An honest and entertaining modern adaptation of a literary classic. It's just a pity that it is perhaps unnecessarily cold and aloof in its first half. (30/01/2020)

Greta Gerwig is a truly amazing narrator. Though the division of the plot into emotionally connected episodes prevented me from living the story of the characters as intensively and clearly as I would have wanted given the scope and the protagonists, it is actually thanks to that episodic arrangement and the time jumps that this intellectually demanding material never gets boring or suffers from narrative sterility. I must admit that at least once I didn’t know whom they were talking about, but otherwise I was thrilled with the natural heroines and their personal vicissitudes, the tasteful humour, the always brilliant Alexandre Desplat and the precise direction, which perfectly leads not only the actors, but also the tempo and the changes in character and motivational perspectives. And this is not about men as evil rulers of the world, it’s about the desire for self-expression in a world where men have the last word and are as indispensable as their own dreams and families. A funny and distinctive script, a wonderful Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh. 85% (14/03/2020)