I’ve been watching the Italian adaptation of the British TV series Gold Digger. Re-named Inganno in Italian, it was so good I got through all six episodes in a single sitting.
Shot on the Amalfi Coast, it’s set in a swanky hotel run by a divorced woman called Gabriella, who begins an affair with a younger man.
Gabriella, played by 66-year-old Monica Guerritore, is elegant and, it has to be said, super-hot in an unconventional way. Elia, played by the relatively unknown Italian actor Giacomo Gianniotti, is the “gold digger” of the title.
I don’t mean to be biased just because I’m Italian, but no other country, other than Italy, could portray a love story in such a powerful way, with all the sex, passion, fighting and intrigue. It’s the kind of TV that Machiavelli would watch.
As for the nudity, I gasped a few times. Guerritore appears almost totally naked. The great thing about her nudity is the message it sends to all women. Talking to my friends who were also fascinated by the series, we were struck by the depiction of a no-longer-perfect female body, the close-up shots of her wrinkles.
Guerritore is that rare thing in our time – a representation of the beauty of a woman in her 60s, one that goes against the idea of the young Italian starlet with her “fake” Barbie-like features, shaped by dozens of plastic surgeries.
Inganno really focuses on her, not him. Yes, the “toy boy” idea drives the narrative, but he’s just a means through which the main protagonist evolves and transforms into a new person.
“This series is going to make many women reconsider their image and role as wives, mothers and lovers. It’s potentially dangerous in many ways,” said Paolo, a friend of mine, after watching Inganno. Paolo is a sexologist.
Italy is the perfect setting – the way in which women have always been portrayed as part of the family makes the programme all the more subversive.
We still live in a very patriarchal society where the man – be it the husband, father or former husband – acts as if he owns his daughter or wife, and the woman is always influenced in her choices by the family she has created.
And when it comes to family, there’s no bigger drama than the Italian one.
Gabriella has lived all her life pleasing other people. First there was her father, who forced her to abort a pregnancy at an early age. Then came her children, who judged her and told her what to do. Finally, there was her husband, who betrayed her with her best friend.
So when the handsome Elia comes along, this put-upon Italian woman understands almost for the first time that she can now live the life she always wanted, according to her own beliefs and desires.
There is a huge amount of sexual passion in the series, but there is another form of passion: the archaic Catholic idea of passion as suffering. It is in this way that the female protagonist confronts her own reality and is strong enough to change it. For a woman to make big life changes, especially if these include family, is so much harder in Italian society than in Britain.
I think so many women can relate to her, because Inganno celebrates the rebirth of a “free” Italian woman. She is no longer a puppet.
Silvia Marchetti is a freelance reporter based in Rome
