Fuori

Imagine spending a decade pouring your soul into a thousand-page manuscript only to have the entire publishing industry tell you it’s "unpublishable" because it’s too free, too carnal, and too female. That was the reality for Goliarda Sapienza in the late 1970s. Most people would have just started a garden or leaned into a bitter mid-life crisis, but Goliarda decided to steal a friend's jewelry. Not because she was a master thief, but because she seemed to need a collision with reality to keep from disappearing entirely.

Mario Martone’s Fuori (2025) isn't your standard "great writer" biopic. It doesn't treat Goliarda like a saint or a fragile vase. Instead, it’s a sweaty, cigarette-stained, and deeply empathetic look at what happens when a brilliant mind gets tossed into the bin of "social rejects." I watched this on a rainy Tuesday while a single fly kept landing on my left knee, and honestly, the fly seemed just as mesmerized by the third act as I was.

The Alchemy of the Cell

The film lives and breathes through Valeria Golino (who I’ll always love for Rain Man and Portrait of a Lady on Fire). She plays Goliarda with a mix of aristocratic displacement and raw, animalistic curiosity. When she enters Rebibbia, Italy’s massive female prison, she isn't there to "study" the inmates for a book—she’s there because she crashed her life into a wall.

What I found most striking was how Martone avoids the "misery porn" tropes of prison dramas. There are no sadistic guards or "queen bee" brawls that feel scripted for cheap thrills. Instead, the drama is found in the communal washing of hair, the shared cigarettes, and the way these women—thieves, junkies, and revolutionaries—create a society more honest than the one that rejected Goliarda’s writing. It makes the 'Girl, Interrupted' version of female incarceration look like a scented candle commercial.

Matilda De Angelis (The Undoing) plays Roberta, a woman who becomes Goliarda’s anchor inside. Their chemistry is the film's engine; it’s a relationship built on the recognition that society has no place for women who refuse to be quiet. Then you have Elodie, the Italian pop sensation who is quickly proving she’s a powerhouse actor. As Barbara, she brings a tragic, electric energy that feels like a live wire dipping into a puddle.

A Rome You Can Taste

Martone has always been a master of setting—look at what he did with Naples in Nostalgia—but here, he captures a 1980s Rome that feels claustrophobic even when the characters are outside. The cinematography by Paolo Carnera uses a palette of scorched yellows and deep, bruised blues. You can practically feel the Roman humidity sticking Goliarda’s silk blouses to her back.

The film transitions from the cramped quarters of the prison to the "freedom" of the outside world, but the title Fuori (Outside) feels ironic. Even after Goliarda is released, she keeps seeking out the women she met inside. She realizes that the "respectable" world of publishing and intellectual salons is just a different kind of cage—one with better wallpaper but much thinner blood.

I particularly loved a scene in a station bar featuring Francesco Gheghi. It’s a small moment, but it captures that specific 80s Italian vibe of transition and uncertainty. The script, co-written by Ippolita Di Majo, handles the intellectual weight of Goliarda’s history without ever feeling like a lecture. It lets the silence do the heavy lifting.

Why This Film Matters Now

In an era where we often talk about "representation" as a series of boxes to be checked, Fuori feels like a radical throwback. It’s a film about marginalized women that doesn't feel like it's trying to win an award for being "important." It just is. In the current landscape of franchise fatigue and $200 million CGI slogs, seeing a director use the camera to simply observe the flicker of an expression on Valeria Golino’s face feels like a luxury.

There's a bit of trivia that makes the ending hit even harder: Goliarda Sapienza died in 1996, never knowing that her rejected masterpiece, The Art of Joy, would eventually be hailed as one of the greatest Italian novels of the century. Martone knows this, and he weaves that sense of "delayed justice" into the film’s DNA.

The film also navigates the tricky waters of current cinema by refusing to sanitize its protagonist. Goliarda is difficult, impulsive, and sometimes incredibly selfish. But in 2025, when every protagonist feels like they’ve been focus-grouped into being "relatable," her jagged edges are a godsend. It’s basically a literary heist movie where the loot is your own soul.

Fuori is a reminder that the most interesting stories usually happen in the places we’re told to look away from. It’s a lush, demanding, and ultimately soaring piece of cinema that proves Mario Martone is one of the few directors left who knows how to film a soul. If you’re tired of the same three plots being recycled on every streaming service, seek this one out. It’s the kind of movie that makes you want to go out and buy a fountain pen, a pack of unfiltered cigarettes, and a very expensive notebook. It’s a celebration of the mess of being alive.