Golden Door

The quirky and often very moving Golden Door follows the Mancuso family, as they leave behind their poverty stricken lives in Italy to journey to America, where it's rumoured that vegetables are the size of people and money grows on trees. Though we never actually discover what happens to the family once they arrive, this matters little to the plot. Instead the film is a careful study by director Crialese of the incredible uprooting that such a journey involves and the strain it puts upon a family. His strict attention to detail, long meditative scenes and inconclusive ending suggest the film means to take its seat in the pantheon of Italian realist and neo-realist films – in this Crialese is not only successful, but also wins us over with the immense sensitivity with which he treats his characters and the sympathy he engenders in them by the end of the film. Also impressive is the medley of creative flourishes such as the surreal daydreams of the head of the Mancuso family, Salvatore, involving jeroboam-sized apples and ocean-sized pools of milk that stand as symbols of the wealth of the new world but also as moments of comic relief in an intense but beautiful story. [Lucy Karina]