Girlfriend in a Coma (film)
| Girlfriend in a Coma | |
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| Directed by | Annalisa Piras |
| Produced by | Annalisa Piras Springshot Productions |
| Written by | Annalisa Piras, Bill Emmott |
| Narrated by | Bill Emmott |
| Cinematography | Patrizio Sacco' |
| Edited by | Francesco Caradonna, Matteo Bini |
| Distributed by | Mercury Media |
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Release date
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Running time
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98 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English/ Italian |
Girlfriend in a Coma is a documentary about Italian and western decline directed, produced and co-written by Annalisa Piras, journalist and film-maker, co-written and narrated by Bill Emmott, former editor-in-chief of The Economist. It has been lauded as being ground-breaking in its creative combination of animation, interviews and hard facts, and has caused fierce controversy in Italy.
The "Girlfriend in a Coma" title is derived from a British musical hit by The Smiths from their album Strangeways, Here We Come (1987). It reflects Emmott's emotional involvement with Italy—the often exasperating "girlfriend" - and the country's present state of comatose paralysis. The film was inspired by Bill Emmott’s book, Good Italy, Bad Italy: Why Italy needs to conquer its demons to face the future, published by Yale University Press in 2012.
Excerpts from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, read by Benedict Cumberbatch, are used to illustrate the vices and virtues of Italy, connecting today’s malaise to that of seven centuries earlier and placing it in the context of Italian history and culture. Animation by the London-based artist Phoebe Boswell provides a fil rouge through the film that is light in appearance but dark in nature.
The documentary, using the eyes of an English outsider directed by a passionate, but exiled, Italian insider, exposes the dire situation of Italian politics and the process of economic and social decline the country has suffered during the last two decades, treating the decline as a warning of what might happen elsewhere in the West. The decline has occurred amid a collapse of moral values and the victory of "Mala Italia" over "Buona Italia". Critical of Silvio Berlusconi, the former Prime Minister, for some of the actions his government undertook or failed to undertake, and for his inappropriate use of his media companies to influence the Italian electorate, the documentary also does not spare criticism of the Left.
Overall, the film identifies "ignavia", the sin of lack of moral courage denounced by Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy (1321), as one of the crucial issues behind Italians’ failure to act when faced with their country’s constant decline over the past 20 years.
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