Tuesday, May 3, 2011

I find the scene after Antonio and Emma make love and they are in the kitchen preparing a meal to be particularly interesting. It is in this scene that she explains what it was like to be an immigrant. She explains to Antonio how she came to Milan with Tancredi and essentially became Italian. She assimilated very well, but in the process lost absolutely all aspects of her real, Russian self. She lost the connection to her culture, thus losing a huge part of her identity. You could even argue she lost it all together by replacing it with her Italian one. She even claims to have forgotten her "real name," though she does relay to Antonio that she is known as Ketish in Russia. The fact that Tancredi gave her the name Emma speaks to how her Italian identity exists only as it is linked to him. In the end of the film, when we see her confess her love of Antonio to her husband Tancredi, he only replies, "You do not exist," coldly removing his jacket from her shoulders. This seems like an immensely harsh insult, but it is essentially true. Her identity as an Italian was invented by him. Everything she knows in Italy is because of him. Now that he has denounced her, in a way, she truly does not exist anymore.
I think we could call her liberated in the final scene of the film. She was sort of trapped in her invented Italian life, and though it wreaked havoc on the entire family, her affair with Antonio set her free. The nod of approval that Betta gives her in the end confirms this. Betta can sort of relate to what it means to be an outcast, as she is a lesbian. However, she finds comfort in her mother keeping this secret, which ultimately gives her the courage to give her mother this approval. I would not call Emma deluded in this scene. Though she has essentially ruined her life and that of those around her, the Italian identity she destroyed was a fabricated one in the first place.

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