Luisa Ranieri
Italian popular cinema found her first. Ranieri broke through in Leonardo Pieraccioni's The Prince and the Pirate, which is not among the credits listed here, and then spent years as a fixture of Rai crime and biographical miniseries, the sort of television that makes an actress a household face at home and invisible everywhere else.
The international credits arrived in pieces. Eros gave her a segment, Letters to Juliet put her into an English-language romance as Isabella, The Music of Silence cast her as a mother in a biopic. None of them explains what happened next.
What happened next is Patrizia in The Hand of God. It is a supporting role and the largest presence in the film, a woman around whom an entire family arranges its embarrassment and its longing, and Ranieri plays her without a shred of apology or a request for sympathy. Parthenope then gave her Greta Cool, an actress detonating a room full of people who admire her, and those two performances together did more for her standing outside Italy than twenty years of miniseries had managed.
She has kept moving across registers since: Catena in Naples in Veils, Titti in Nuovo Olimpo, Rosalie Tobia in Modi, Alberta in Diamonds, an ensemble murder comedy in 7 Women and a Murder, and a Christmas film with her name on the title role. The recent run is comfortably the strongest stretch of the career, and it arrived at an age when Italian cinema traditionally stops offering actresses anything at all.
Movies (12)
Where to start with Luisa Ranieri
Go to The Hand of God first. Her Patrizia is the performance that made people outside Italy learn the name, and the film is a beautiful, self-indulgent memoir that earns most of its indulgence. Parthenope is the companion piece, more difficult and far more divisive, and her Greta Cool arrives like a thrown drink. After that, Naples in Veils for the moody thriller register and Nuovo Olimpo for the romantic one; both are handsomely made and neither is remotely subtle. Letters to Juliet is the easy English-language entry, a postcard of a film that knows exactly what it is. 7 Women and a Murder is the frivolous ensemble and quite fun with it, and Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness is the curiosity for people who enjoy watching actors play artists' friends.