Un paio di occhiali

There's a line in the dialogue here where a mother asks her almost blind daughter why she needs glasses. After all, she can't even read! Fortunately for this young girl for whom most of her life is lived in a sort of blur, she is to be fitted out for a pair and as they arrive at her home, there is a ceremony akin to the launching of a ship as they are unveiled. Of course, she has worn them for only a few minutes before she faints. She is going to have to get used to the things, but you can tell by the look on her face that her life has changed irrevocably. Meantime, this lively drama also offers us quite a poignant look at life in a community with little prospects for improvement or opportunity and where it's occupants are especially set in their ways - and those ways are not always the most progressive for themselves or for the young "Annamaria" (Renata Brando). On the acting front, the young Brando delivers quite engagingly here given she has next to no dialogue, and the remainder of the ensemble cast present us with a sense of family that, even if fairly poverty-stricken, does care about each other and wants the best for the young girl. There is also a little rather dark humour wrapped around this and, as you might expect, a lot of their problems are laid fairly and squarely at God's door, too.