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
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